EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY OF 
THE THOUGHT-PROCESSES 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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LECTURES 

ON THE 



Experimental Psychology 

of the Thought- Processes 



BY 
EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER 



4l2eto $otfc 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



1909 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1909 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1909 



the MASON-HENRY 
Syracuse, N. Y. 



) CI. A 253'! ;; 



Co 

MADISON BENTLEY 



PREFACE 

IN a course of lectures on the elementary psy- 
chology of Feeling and Attention, published 
last year, I remarked that "the system of psy- 
chology rests upon a threefold foundation: the 
doctrine of sensation and image, the elementary 
doctrine of feeling, and the doctrine of attention." 
This statement, which formed the basis of my 
whole discussion, was promptly challenged by re- 
viewers. I was misled, they affirmed, by a sen- 
sationalists bias ; I should have taken account of 
current experimental work upon the thought- 
processes; I had no right to assume that all 
intellection is imaginal in character. 

I could not but acknowledge the essential jus- 
tice of this criticism, although I could not either 
accept my critics' point of view. I was, indeed, 
engaged in writing a brief defence of psycho- 
logical sensationalism, when I received an invi- 
tation to deliver a series of lectures at the 
University of Illinois. Here was an opportunity, 
of which I gladly availed myself, to treat in 
some little detail of the recent experimental con- 
tributions to the psychology of thought. The 
present volume is the result. 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

I have printed the lectures as they were written 
for delivery at the University of Illinois, in 
March, 1909, In the appended notes, I have 
allowed myself a freedom of reference and com- 
ment somewhat wider than before. The presence 
of the notes at the end of the book need not 
disturb the general reader, while their fulness 
may prevent certain minor misunderstandings to 
which the Feeling and Attention has been ex- 
posed, I have, however, made it a rule to leave 
out of consideration all experimental work that 
is concerned simply with association and repro- 
duction, and all purely theoretical studies of the 
thought-consciousness. Where the dividing line 
is at all obscure, I have, it is true, not hesitated 
to transgress. Still, the psychological reader 
will miss much that, without this limitation of 
purpose, he might reasonably expect to find. 

My thanks are due to my wife ; to Professor 
S. S. Colvin, of the University of Illinois, whose 
invitation gave occasion for the writing of the 
lectures; to many friends, at Urbana and at 
Ithaca, among whom I may name Professor J. 
W. Baird, Dr. L. R. Geissler, and Dr. W. H. 
Pyle ; and especially to my colleague, Professor 
I. M. Bentley, who has read the manuscript of 
the book, has constantly assisted me during its 



PREFACE ix 

preparation with criticism and positive sugges- 
tion, and by his sacrifice of time and energy has 
made it possible for me to bring my task to early 
completion. In dedicating the volume to Pro- 
fessor Bentley, I wish to express my gratitude 
for the help that he has generously rendered, not 
only in this particular case, but in all my literary 
undertakings of the past dozen years. 

Cornell Heights, Ithaca, N. Y. 
July 15, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

I. Imagery and Sensationalism 3 

1. The Imaginal Mind 6 

ii. Psychological Sensationalism 22 

II. 'Reference to Object' as the Criterion of Mind. 41 

i. Immanent Objectivity 42 

ii. Transitive Objectivity 61 

III. Methods and Results : The Bewusstseinslage . . 79 

i. Methods of Investigation. . . . 80 

ii. The Conscious Attitude 98 

IV. Methods and Results: The Thought-Element. 117 

V. The Experimental Psychology of Thought. . 157 

i. Appreciation 157 

ii. Regulative Maxims 168 

iii. The Sensationalistic Standpoint 174 

Notes to Lecture I 197 

Notes to Lecture II 218 

Notes to Lecture III 235 

Notes to Lecture IV 249 

Notes to Lecture V 274 

Index of Names 309 

Index of Subjects 312 



LECTURE I 

IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 



LECTURE I 

IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

IF I chance to be reflecting on the progress of 
science, there is likely to arise before my 
mind's eye a scene familiar to my childhood, — the 
flow of the incoming tide over a broad extent of 
sandy shore. The whole body of water is press- 
ing forward, irresistibly, as natural law decrees. 
But its front is not unbroken; for the sand is 
rock-strewn and uneven, so that here there are 
eddying pools of unusual depth, and there, again, 
long fingers of the sea stretched out towards the 
land. My mind, as I shall presently show in 
more detail, is prone to imagery; and this image, 
of check and overflow in the van of a great 
movement, has come to represent for me the 
progress of science. 

You will take my meaning, even if you do not 
see my picture. Scientific knowledge is steadily 
and continuously increasing; but the men who 
stand for science are likely, at any given time, 
to be dominated by a few particular interests. 
Sometimes a brilliant discovery or a daring the- 
ory opens up a certain line of investigation; 



4 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

sometimes suggestion seems to spring of itself 
from the mere accumulation of facts. Striking 
illustrations, under both of these heads, are fur- 
nished by the physics and the biology of the past 
decade. Illustrations at least as striking, al- 
though less generally known, are furnished by 
our own growing science of experimental psy- 
chology. A few years ago, it seemed that every- 
body was interested in kinesthetic sensations. 
Then the geometrical illusions of vision had 
their day. Then we were all running to the 
study of memory and association. Then the 
affective processes came to the forefront of dis- 
cussion. And all the while the experimental 
method was doing its appointed work over the 
whole face of the science. 

Just now, it might fairly be argued that the 
centre of interest for the experimental psycholo- 
gist lies in the field of thought. Current ten- 
dencies are oftentimes difficult to explain, simply 
because we lack perspective; and I do not find 
explanation easy in the present case. Yet there 
must have been, at the beginning of the twen- 
tieth century, something in the psychological 
atmosphere that was peculiarly favourable to 
thought. 1 We may point, perhaps, to the grad- 
ual and increasing recognition of the value of 
introspection, with its promise of a wide exten- 



THE PROBLEM OF THOUGHT 5 

sion of the experimental method: for if the 
psychological experiment is, in essentials, a con- 
trolled introspection, and if our instruments of 
precision are but means to that control, the 
method may evidently be carried into every re- 
gion of consciousness. 2 We may think, also, of 
the publication of Wundt's great work on lan- 
guage, and of its challenge to the experiment- 
alists. 3 "Fortunately for the science," Wundt 
writes, "there are sources of objective psycho- 
logical knowledge, which become accessible at 
the very point where the experimental method 
fails us. These are certain products of the com- 
mon life, in which we may trace the operation of 
determinate psychical motives : chief among them 
are language, myth and custom." 4 Here is a 
limit set to the applicability of experiment; and 
to set a bound is directly to challenge a trespass. 
We may think, once more, of the stimulus re- 
ceived from workers in neighbouring fields of 
logic and Gegenstandstheorie, from Lipps and 
Erdmann, from Husserl and Meinong. 5 We may 
remember that the human mind is for ever swing- 
ing between extremes, and we may suppose that 
the time had come for a reaction against 'sensa- 
tionalism.' 6 Here are motives enough, if we 
could trace their several influences, — and if we 
could be sure that they are motives : if, I mean, 



6 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

we could be sure that they are not themselves 
symptoms of a general movement, which has 
involved experimental psychology as it has in- 
volved the mental sciences at large. However 
that may be, the fact is there. Binet in France, 
Marbe and his successors in Germany, Wood- 
worth in the United States, have all sought to 
bring the processes of thought under the con- 
trol of the experimental method. And all alike 
have reached the conclusion, each independ- 
ently for himself, that the experience of thought 
is not adequately described in the orthodox text- 
books of psychology. 

It is of these men, of their views and their 
work, that I am to speak in the lectures now be- 
gun. I shall report, as impartially as I may, 
their results and their interpretations; and I 
shall then outline my own understanding of the 
whole matter. But we cannot come, all in a 
moment, to close quarters with the experiments. 
There are certain prior questions that must be 
asked and answered; and I devote this and the 
following Lecture to their discussion. 



First of all, there is the question of individual 
differences, differences of mental constitution. 
The creation of a scientific psychology of these 



THE IMAGINAL MIND 7 

differences is, in my opinion, one of the prin- 
cipal achievements of the experimental method; 7 
and I believe that a frank acceptance of the 
teachings of differential psychology will go 
far to allay some of the perennial controversies 
of the text-books. At all events, I do not see 
how one can fairly approach the psychology of 
thought, whether as critic or as expositor, with- 
out taking account of the machinery of thought 
in one's own case. I said just now that I should 
try to be impartial; and I can offer no better 
guarantee of good faith than to confess my 
constitutional bias. I propose, therefore, to turn 
out my mind for your inspection. I can give 
you nothing systematic, nothing that has been 
verified by experiment; but the account will be 
correct, so far as it goes, and will suffice for our 
present purpose. 

My mind, then, is of the imaginal sort, — I 
wish that we had a better adjective! — and my 
ideational type is of the sort described in the 
psychologies as mixed. I have always had, and 
I have always used, a wide range and a great 
variety of imagery ; and my furniture of images 
is, perhaps, in better than average condition, 
because — fearing that, as one gets older, one 
tends also to become more and more verbal in 
type 8 — I have made a point of renewing it b$ 



8 IMAGEKY AND SENSATIONALISM 

practice. I am able now, for instance, as I was 
able when I entered the class-room nearly twenty 
years ago, to lecture from any one of the three 
main cues. I can read off what I have to say 
from a memory manuscript; or I can follow the 
lead of my voice; or I can trust to the guidance 
of kinaesthesis, the anticipatory feel of the move- 
ments of articulation. 9 I use these three methods 
under different circumstances. When it is a 
matter of preparing a lecture on a definite plan, 
of dividing and subdividing under various head- 
ings, I draw up in the mind's eye a table of con- 
tents, written or printed, and refer to it as the 
hour proceeds. When there is any difficulty in 
exposition, a point to be argued pro and con or 
a conclusion to be brought out from the conver- 
gence of several lines of proof, I hear my own 
voice speaking just ahead of me: an experience 
which, in the description, sounds as if it should 
be confusing, but which in reality is precisely the 
reverse. When, again, I come to a piece of 
straightforward narrative, I let my throat take 
care of itself; so that I am able to give full atten- 
tion to blackboard drawing or to the manipula- 
tion of instruments on the table. As a rule, I 
look to all three kinds of prompting in the course 
of a single hour. At times, however, some one 
method is followed exclusively : thus, when I am 



THE IMAGINAL MIND 9 

tired, I find that vision and audition are likely to 
lapse, and I am left alone with kinsesthesis. 

When I am working for myself, reading or 
writing or thinking, I experience a complex in- 
terlacing of imagery which it is difficult to 
describe, or at any rate to describe with the just 
emphasis. My natural tendency is to employ 
internal speech ; and there are occasions when my 
voice rings out clearly to the mental ear and my 
throat feels stiff as if with much talking. But 
in general the internal speech is reduced to a 
faint flicker of articulatory movement. This 
may be due, in part, to the fact that I am a very 
rapid reader, and have tried to acquire the power 
of purely visual reading. 10 But it is also due, I 
am sure, to the fact that I have vivid and per- 
sistent auditory imagery. If I may venture on 
a very sweeping statement, I should say that I 
never sit down to read a book, or to write a para- 
graph, or to think out a problem, without a 
musical accompaniment. Usually the accom- 
paniment is orchestral, with a preponderance of 
the wood-wind, — I have a sort of personal affec- 
tion for the oboe; sometimes it is in the tone- 
colour of piano or violin; never, I think, is it 
vocal. Usually, again, it is the reproduction of 
a known composition; on rare occasions it is 
wholly unfamiliar. I am not aware that I make 



10 IMAGEEY AND SENSATIONALISM 

any use of this musical imagery, though I should 
be sorry to lose it, and I can offer no explana- 
tion of its arousal. 11 However, the important 
point in the present connection is, simply, that 
its freakish appearance has, without doubt, 
tended to repress the auditory factor in internal 
speech. 

These musical and verbal images crop up of 
their own accord. I have never sought to con- 
trol the former; I have, as I said just now, some- 
what weakened the latter by my effort after 
purely visual reading. I turn now to the topic 
of visual imagery, which is always at my dis- 
posal and which I can mould and direct at will. 12 
I rely, in my thinking, upon visual imagery in 
the sense that I like to get a problem into some 
sort of visual schema, from which I can think my 
way out and to which I can return. As I read 
an article, or the chapter of a book, I instinc- 
tively arrange the facts or arguments in some 
visual pattern, and I am as likely to think in 
terms of this pattern as I am to think in words. 
I understand, and to that extent I enjoy, an 
author whom I can thus visualise. Contrariwise, 
an author whose thought is not susceptible to my 
visual arrangement appears to me to be obscure 
and involved ; and an author who has an arrange- 
ment of his own, which crosses the pattern that 



VISUAL SCHEMATA 11 

I am forming in my mind, appears to me diffi- 
cult and, to that extent, unen joy able. Hence 
my standard of clarity and consistency is, in the 
last resort, visual. A writer may be discussing 
a highly complicated question; but if he is what 
I call clear, I can follow and understand him; 
his pattern is complex, but it may be traced. On 
the other hand, a writer may be discoursing in 
the easiest popular fashion; but if he is what I 
call obscure, if I cannot trace his pattern, I am 
baffled by him. I must then go to my friends, or 
to printed reviews of his work, and try to pick 
up a pattern at second hand. 13 

You will understand that this visual frame- 
work of thought is both an advantage and a 
limitation. What I know, I know clearly; and 
what I have once understood, I am likely to re- 
member. But there are disadvantages. The 
task of composition, for example, is for me 
extremely laborious. Words come quickly and 
readily enough ; I have only to let them come, in 
terms of internal speech. But then the words 
are apt to switch me off the visual track, to 
entangle me in secondary arguments, to bring 
up irrelevant associations; I cannot trust myself 
to think simply in words; indeed, I sometimes 
doubt, as I read over my rough draughts, if there 
ever was a psychologist who could make so many 



12 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

loose-ended statements in so few pages as I can. 
This defect prescribes its own remedy. More 
serious is the temptation to allow one's visual 
schemata to harden, to become rigid. I have 
constantly to fight against the tendency to pre- 
mature systematisation. 

The term Visual schema' is, of course, itself 
equivocal. Those of you whose minds are built 
on the same general plan as my own will know 
well enough what it means. But I must warn 
the others, to whom this sort of imagery is un- 
known, not to think of a geometrical figure 
printed black on white, or of anything a hun- 
dredth part as definite. I should be sorely 
puzzled to say what colours appear in my sche- 
mata, and I certainly could not draw on paper my 
pattern of a particular writer or a particular 
book. I get a suggestion of dull red, and I get 
a suggestion of angles rather than curves ; I get, 
pretty clearly, the picture of movement along 
lines, and of neatness or confusion where the 
moving lines come together. But that is all, — 
all, at least, that ordinary introspection reveals. 
The hardening and rigidity, against which I am 
always on guard, is not a fixation of the schema 
as visual outline, but its fixation as meaning, as 
the meaning of something read or heard or 
thought. I wish to be clear on this point: the 
visual pattern does not indifferently accompany, 



VISUAL SYMBOLISM 13 

but is or equals, my gross understanding of the 
matter in hand. 

My visual imagery, voluntarily aroused as for 
Galton's breakfast-table test, is extremely vivid, 
though it seems bodiless and papery when com- 
pared with direct perception. I have never, so 
far as I am aware, experienced a visual hallu- 
cination; I have no number-form; I know noth- 
ing of coloured hearing. On the other hand, my 
mind, in its ordinary operations, is a fairly com- 
plete picture gallery, — not of finished paintings, 
but of impressionist notes. Whenever I read or 
hear that somebody has done something mod- 
estly, or gravely, or proudly, or humbly, or 
courteously, I see a visual hint of the modesty or 
gravity or pride or humility or courtesy. The 
stately heroine gives me a flash of a tall figure, 
the only clear part of which is a hand holding up 
a steely grey skirt ; the humble suitor gives me a 
flash of a bent figure, the only clear part of 
which is the bowed back, though at times there 
are hands held deprecatingly before the absent 
face. A great many of these sketches are irrele- 
vant and accessory ; but they often are, and they 
always may be, the vehicles of a logical meaning. 
The stately form that steps through the French 
window to the lawn may be clothed in all the 
colours of the rainbow ; but its stateliness is the 



14 IMAGEKY AND SENSATIONALISM 

hand on the grey skirt. I shall not multiply 
instances. All this description must be either 
self-evident or as unreal as a fairy-tale. 14 

It leads us, however, to a very important 
question, — the old question of the possibility of 
abstract or general ideas. You will recall the 
main heads of the controversy. Locke had main- 
tained that it is possible to form the general 
idea, say, of a triangle which is "neither oblique 
nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor 
scalenon; but all and none of these at once." 15 
Berkeley replied that "if any man has the faculty 
of framing in his mind such an idea of a triangle, 
as is here described, it is in vain to pretend to 
dispute him out of it, nor would I go about it. . . . 
For myself, I find indeed I have a faculty of 
imagining, or representing to myself, the ideas 
of those particular things I have perceived, and 
of variously compounding and dividing them, 
. . . [but] I cannot by any effort of thought 
conceive the abstract idea described above. . . . 
The idea of man that I frame to myself must be 
either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a 
straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a 
middle-sized man." 16 The dispute has lasted 
down to our own day. Hamilton calls the 
Lockean doctrine a 'revolting absurdity.' 17 
Huxley finds it entirely acceptable. "An anat- 



THE GENERAL IDEA 15 

omist who occupies himself intently with the 
examination of several specimens of some new 
kind of animal, in course of time acquires so 
vivid a conception of its form and structure, that 
the idea may take visible shape and become a 
sort of waking dream. But the figure which 
thus presents itself is generic, not specific. It 
is no copy of any one specimen, but, more or 
less, a mean of the series," 18 — a composite 
photograph of the whole group. 

All through this discussion there runs, unfor- 
tunately, the confusion of logic and psychology 
that is characteristic of the English school. It 
is no more correct to speak, in psychology, of an 
abstract idea, or a general idea, than it would be 
to speak of an abstract sensation or a general 
sensation. What is abstract and general is not 
the idea, the process in consciousness, but the 
logical meaning of which that process is the 
vehicle. All that we can say of the idea is that 
it comprises such and such qualities ; shows these 
and these temporal and spatial characters ; has a 
certain degree of vividness as focal or marginal, 
clear or obscure; has the vague haziness of dis- 
tant sounds and faint lights or the clean-cut 
definiteness of objects to which the sense-organ 
is accommodated; is arranged on a particular 
pattern. 19 Locke and Huxley, now, believed 



16 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

that abstract meaning is represented in con- 
sciousness by abstract or composite imagery; 
Berkeley and the other Nominalists believed that 
imagery is always individual and concrete, and 
that abstract meaning is accordingly represented 
by the abstract term, the general name. 20 But 
here is no alternative for psychology. Imagery 
might be strictly reproductive in form, and yet — 
for a certain type of mental constitution — be the 
psychological equivalent of an abstract meaning ; 
and, again, imagery might be vague and indefi- 
nite, and yet be the psychological equivalent of 
an individual, particular meaning. The issue, in 
its psychological formulation, is an issue of fact. 
Is wordless imagery, under any circumstances, 
the mental representative of meaning? And if 
it is, do we find a correlation of vague imagery 
with abstract and of definite imagery with par- 
ticular meaning? 

The first of these questions I have already 
answered, for my own case, in the affirmative. 
In large measure I think, that is, I mean and I 
understand, in visual pictures. The second ques- 
tion I cannot answer in the affirmative. I doubt 
whether particularity or abstractness of mean- 
ing has anything essentially to do with the degree 
of definiteness of my images. The mental vision 
of the incoming tide, which I described at the 



THE GENERAL IDEA 17 

beginning of this Lecture, is no more definite 
when it recalls an afternoon's ramble than when 
it means the progress of science. We must, 
above all things, distinguish between attentional 
clearness and intrinsic clearness of definition, 
— sharpness, precision, cognitive clearness. A 
process may be transversing the very centre of 
consciousness, and therefore from the point of 
view of a psychology of attention may be maxi- 
mally clear: yet it may be so weak, so brief, so 
instable, that its whole character is vague and 
indefinite. In my own experience, attentional 
clearness seems to be the one thing needful to 
qualify a process for meaning. Whether the 
picture as picture is sharply outlined and highly 
coloured is a matter of indifference. 

Come back now to the authorities: to Locke's 
triangle and Huxley's composite animal. My 
own picture of the triangle, the image that means 
triangle to me, is usually a fairly definite outline 
of the little triangular figure that stands for the 
word 'triangle' in the geometries. But I can 
quite well get Locke's picture, the triangle that 
is no triangle and all triangles at one and the 
same time. It is a flashy thing, come and gone 
from moment to moment: it hints two or three 
red angles, with the red lines deepening into 
black, seen on a dark green ground. It is not 



18 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

there long enough for me to say whether the 
angles join to form the complete figure, or even 
whether all three of the necessary angles are 
given. Nevertheless, it means triangle; it is 
Locke's general idea of triangle; it is Hamilton's 
palpable absurdity made real. And the com- 
posite animal? Well, the composite animal 
strikes me as somewhat too even, too nicely bal- 
anced. No doubt, the idea in Huxley's mind 
was of that kind ; he, as an anatomist, was inter- 
ested to mark all the parts and proportions of 
the creatures before him. 21 But my own ideas 
of animals are sketchier and more selective : horse 
is, to me, a double curve and a rampant posture 
with a touch of mane about it; cow is a longish 
rectangle with a certain facial expression, a sort 
of exaggerated pout. Again, however, these 
things mean horse and cow, are the psychological 
vehicles of those logical meanings. 

And what holds of triangle and horse and cow 
holds of all the "unpicturable notions of intelli- 
gence." 22 No one of them is unpicturable, if you 
do but have the imaginal mind. "It is impos- 
sible," remarks a recent writer, "to ideate a mean- 
ing; one can only know it." 23 Impossible? But 
I have been ideating meanings all my life. And 
not only meanings, but meaning also. Meaning 
in general is represented in my consciousness by 



THE IDEATION OF MEANING 19 

another of these impressionist pictures. I see 
meaning as the blue-grey tip of a kind of scoop, 
which has a bit of yellow above it (probably a 
part of the handle), and which is just digging 
into a dark mass of what appears to be plastic ma- 
terial. I was educated on classical lines; and it 
is conceivable that this picture is an echo of the 
oft-repeated admonition to 'dig out the mean- 
ing' of some passage of Greek or Latin. I do 
not know; but I am sure of the image. And I 
am sure that others have similar images. I put 
the question not long since to the members of my 
graduate seminary, and two of the twelve stu- 
dents present at once gave an affirmative answer. 
The one reported the mental unrolling of a white 
scroll: what he actually saw was a whitish lump 
or mass, flattened and flattening towards the 
right. The other reported a horizontal line, with 
two short verticals at a little distance from the 
two ends. The suggestion in these two cases is 
plain enough: meaning is something that you 
find by straightening things out, or it is some- 
thing that is included or contained in things. 
There was, however, no such suggestion in the 
minds of my informants: for them, as for me, 
the mental representation of meaning is a simple 
datum, natural and ultimate. 24 

I have dwelt at some length upon this visual- 



20 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

isation of meanings because the point in dispute 
is of great importance, historically and systemat- 
ically, and because visual imagery offers, so to 
say, the most substantial materials for its dis- 
cussion. Let me repeat, however, that my mind, 
the mind which I am trying to describe to you, 
is by no means exclusively, is not even predomi- 
nantly, of the visual type. I have, as I have 
said, a great deal of auditory imagery; I have 
also a great deal of kinesthetic imagery. The 
former needs no further discussion, since it plays 
no active part in my thinking; but I must speak 
briefly of kinesthesis. 

As recently as 1904 I was not sure whether or 
not I possessed free kinesthetic images. 25 I 
could not decide whether my kinesthetic mem- 
ories were imaginal, or whether they involved an 
actual reinstatement, in weaker form, of the 
original sensations. I had no criterion by which 
to distinguish the sensation from the image. 
However, as so often happens, I had hardly 
recorded my difficulty when the criterion was 
found: a ground of distinction so simple, that 
one wonders why there should have been any 
difficulty at all. It may be roughly phrased in 
the statement that actual movement always 
brings into play more muscles than are necessary, 
while ideal movement is confined to the precise 



KINESTHETIC IMAGERY 21 

group of muscles concerned. You will notice the 
difference at once — provided that you have 
kinesthetic images — if you compare an actual 
nod of the head with the mental nod that signifies 
assent to an argument, or the actual frown and 
wrinkling of the forehead with the mental frown 
that signifies perplexity. The sensed nod and 
frown are coarse and rough in outline; the 
imaged nod and frown are cleanly and delicately 
traced. 26 I do not say, of course, that this is 
the sole difference between the two modes of 
experience. On the contrary, now that it has 
become clear, I seem to find that the kinesthetic 
image and the kinesthetic sensation differ in all 
essential respects precisely as visual image differs 
from visual sensation. But I think it is a depend- 
able difference, and one that offers a good start- 
ing point for further analysis. 

We shall recur to this kinesthetic imagery in 
a later Lecture. All that I have to remark now 
is that the various visual images, which I have 
referred to as possible vehicles of logical mean- 
ing, oftentimes share their task with kinesthesis. 
Not only do I see gravity and modesty and pride 
and courtesy and stateliness, but I feel or act 
them in the mind's muscles. This is, I suppose, 
a simple case of empathy, if we may coin that 
term as a rendering of Einfiihlung ; there is noth- 



22 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

ing curious or idiosyncratic about it; but it is a 
fact that must be mentioned. And further: just 
as the visual image may mean of itself, without 
kinesthetic accompaniment, so may the kines- 
thetic image occur and mean of itself, without 
assistance from vision. I represent the meaning 
of affirmation, for instance, by the image of a 
little nick felt at the back of the neck, — an ex- 
perience which, in sensation, is complicated by 
pressures and pulls from the scalp and throat. 27 

II 

I said at the outset that I should confess my 
constitutional bias; and if you were now asked 
to name that bias, you would doubtless agree that 
a mind which thinks in the manner described 
must have a strong leaning toward sensational- 
ism. I do not think that such a tendency is 
matter for praise or blame, is anything to be 
proud or ashamed of ; it is a natural fact. What 
I would ask you to remember, however, is this: 
that the constitutionally impartial mind does not 
exist, or at any rate is infinitely rare. Every one 
of us has his natural inclinations to overcome; 
and if I lean towards sensationalism, why, the 
imageless minds, the minds of the extreme verbal 
type, lean just as strongly in the opposite direc- 
tion. A critic will often begin — fairly enough — 



WHAT IS SENSATIONALISM? 23 

by charging his author with bias, but will then 
proceed to state his own views in complete un- 
consciousness of a very robust counter-bias. 
Well! it is from the clash of these individual 
psychologies that a generalised psychology of 
thought must arise. The individual psychologist 
can avoid misrepresentation and unfair imputa- 
tion; to that extent he can and must achieve 
impartiality; but he cannot wholly transcend the 
limits of his mental constitution. Philosophy 
itself, we have recently been told, is in no negli- 
gible degree a question of temperament. 

I am ready, then, to acknowledge a tendency 
toward sensationalism, if that is the logical infer- 
ence from my mental type. But it is important 
to know precisely what the sensationalism of 
experimental psychology connotes. Otherwise, 
we shall be unable to trace its consequences, and 
we shall be in danger of reading into it historical 
implications, perhaps of an epistemological sort, 
which are entirely foreign to its psychological 
meaning. 

Sensationalism is succinctly defined, in Bald- 
win's Dictionary, as "the theory that all knowl- 
edge originates in sensations ; that all cognitions, 
even reflective ideas and so-called intuitions, can 
be traced back to elementary sensations." 28 It is 
thus, primarily, a theory of the origin of knowl- 



! 



24 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

edge, not a theory of the genesis of thought, 
"Historically," — the Dictionary continues, — "it 
is generally combined with Associationalism." 
Turning to Associationism, in the same work, we 
find the following definition: "The theory which, 
starting with certain simple and ultimate con- 
stituents of consciousness, makes mental develop- 
ment consist solely or mainly in the combination 
of these elements according to certain laws of 
association. According to this theory, rigidly 
carried out, all genesis of new products is due to 
the combination of pre-existing elements." 29 
Here is psychological formulation. But it 
would be a great mistake, though it is a mistake 
not seldom made, to confuse the sensationalism 
of experimental psychology with the doctrine of 
associationism. Let us see wherein the two kinds 
of sensationalism differ. 

In the first place, the associationists did not 
distinguish the theory of knowledge from the 
theory of thought. "The British thinkers of the 
past" — I am quoting from a British thinker of 
the present — "were far from keeping their psy- 
chology unadulterated. . . . They gave us, in 
general, psychology and philosophy inextricably 
intermingled." "Their work often shows a cross- 
ing of interests and of points of view. Questions 
of logic and theory of knowledge were mixed up 



ASSOCIATIONISM 25 

with the more properly psychological inquiry." 30 
In fact, the associationists dealt, on principle, 
with logical meanings; not with sensations, but 
with sensations-of ; not with ideas, but with 
ideas-of ; it is only incidentally that they leave 
the plane of meaning for the plane of existence. 
The experimentalists, on the other hand, aim to 
describe the contents of consciousness not as they 
mean but as they are. An admirable illustration 
of this change of standpoint is furnished by the 
doctrine of association itself. We were formerly 
taught that the idea of Napoleon calls up the 
idea of Julius Caesar because both men were 
great generals : it is a case of association by simi- 
larity; and that the idea of church calls up the 
idea of state because the two ideas have often 
been conjoined in experience: it is a case of asso- 
ciation by contiguity. But when Ebbinghaus 
began the experimental study of memory and 
association, he chose as his materials nonsense- 
syllables, verbal forms that lacked verbal mean- 
ing, contents that presented themselves simply 
as existential. These syllables, he points out, are 
qualitatively simple and homogeneous: "out of 
many thousand combinations of letters there are 
only a dozen or two that make sense, and of these 
again there are only a few that arouse the 
thought of their sense or meaning during the 



26 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

process of learning"; and they are also quantita- 
tively variable, "whereas to break off before the 
end or to begin in the middle of a verse or a 
sentence entails manifold disturbances of the 
sense and so introduces all sorts of complica- 
tions." 31 It is, indeed, these nonsense-syllables 
that have mainly helped us to our present knowl- 
edge of the mechanics of reproduction. You 
may roughly measure the advance by comparing 
Ebbinghaus' chapter on Die Aufeinanderfolge 
der seelischen Gebilde with Bain's chapters on 
Intellect. I do not say, of course, that experi- 
mental psychology ignores meaning; in so far 
as meaning is a phase or aspect of conscious 
contents, it is taken account of; but it is taken 
account of sub specie existential. And where 
existence is the form to be considered, we sim- 
plify our task and hasten our progress by select- 
ing, as the first materials of experiment, contents 
to which that form is natural and adequate. 32 

Locke's ideas, then, and James Mill's ideas, 
were meanings, thought-tokens, bits of knowl- 
edge; the sensations and ideas of modern 
psychology are Erlebnisse, data of immediate 
experience. And the change of standpoint 
brings with it a second principal difference 
between the older and the newer sensationalism. 
Meanings are stable, and may be discussed with- 



THE IDEA AS PROCESS 27 

out reference to time ; so that a psychology whose 
elements are meanings is an atomistic psychol- 
ogy; the elements join, like blocks of mosaic, to 
give static formations, or connect, like the links 
of a chain, to give discrete series. But experi- 
ence is continuous and a function of time ; so that 
a psychology whose elements are sensations, in 
the modern sense of the term, is a process- 
psychology, innocent both of mosaic and of 
concatenation. This is a point which Wundt, 
the father of experimental psychology, never 
tires of emphasizing. In a well-known passage, 
in w T hich he is appraising the value of the experi- 
mental method for his own psychological 
development, he says: "I learned from it that the 
'idea' must be regarded as a process, no less vari- 
able and transitory than a feeling or a volition; 
and I saw that, for that reason, the old doctrine 
of association is no longer tenable." 33 And 
again, in protesting against the hypostatisation 
of ideas, he writes: "The ideas themselves are not 
objects, as by confusion with their objects they 
are supposed to be, but they are occurrences, 
Ereignisse, that grow and decay and during their 
brief passage are in constant change." 34 Now I 
dare say that you have heard or read dozens of 
statements to this effect. What I want you to 
do, however, and what I want some of our 



28 IMAGEEY AND SENSATIONALISM 

philosophical critics to do, is to realise what the 
statements mean; to realise that those who do 
their business in the laboratories are always 
operating and observing in terms of process. 
The realisation is not quite easy: first, because 
language is discontinuous, and our descriptions 
must substitute a word-mosaic for the moving 
pictures of experience ; and secondly, because the 
terms which we are obliged to use for these 
descriptions are already stamped as meanings by 
their use in previous systems. Even so modern 
a psychologist as James has not worked out to 
entire clearness in this matter. In his chapter on 
The Stream of Thought he speaks, you will 
remember, of the varying rate at which succes- 
sive psychoses shade gradually into one another. 
"When the rate is slow/' he goes on, "we are 
aware of the object of our thought in a com- 
paratively restful and stable way. When rapid, 
we are aware of a passage, a relation, a transi- 
tion from it, or between it and something else." 
Consciousness, "like a bird's life, seems to be 
made up of an alternation of flights and perch- 
ings." So he distinguishes the substantive from 
the transitive parts of the stream of thought. 
"Now it is very difficult, introspectively, to see 
the transitive parts for what they really are. . . . 
The rush of the thought is so headlong that it 



THE 'FEELINGS OF RELATION' 29 

almost always brings us up at the conclusion 
before we can arrest it. . . . The attempt at 
introspective analysis in these cases is in fact like 
seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or try- 
ing to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how 
the darkness looks." 35 But is there not here a 
confusion between what is transitive in function 
and what is transient in experience? Does it 
not often happen that the flight is steadier and 
lasts longer than the perching? I think that a 
good deal of the mystery which attaches to the 
feelings of 'if and 'but' is due to sheer confusion 
of logical meaning and psychological process, of 
transitive and transitory. The conditioning and 
the excepting consciousnesses may, in fact, move 
more slowly than the object-consciousnesses to 
which they refer. And if James had looked 
away from 'awareness of object' and 'awareness 
of relation,' and had looked toward the actual 
contents of consciousness, we should not have 
heard of the top and the gas-jet. Contrast, for 
instance, his treatment of the 'feeling of the 
central active self.' "It is difficult for me to 
detect in the activity any purely spiritual element 
at all. Whenever my introspective glance suc- 
ceeds in turning round quickly enough to catch 
one of these manifestations of spontaneity in 
the act, all it can ever feel distinctly is some bod- 



30 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

ily process, for the most part taking place within 
the head." 36 Why cannot the introspective 
glance do as much for the feelings of relation? 
But we must return for a moment to associa- 
tionism. I said that the psychology of meanings 
left us with mosaic arrangements or with discrete 
series. You may reply that this characterisation 
is unfair. James Mill speaks, for instance, of 
the coalescence of ideas: "where two or more 
ideas have been repeated together, and the asso- 
ciation has become very strong, they sometimes 
spring up in such close combination as not to be 
distinguishable"; the idea of weight — to take a 
single illustration — involves the ideas of resist- 
ance and direction and the "feeling or feelings 
denominated Will," and resistance and direction 
are themselves compounded of simpler ideas. 37 
And John Mill writes, in the same spirit: "When 
impressions have been so often experienced in 
conjunction that each of them calls up readily 
and instantaneously the ideas of the whole group, 
those ideas sometimes melt and coalesce into one 
another, and appear not several ideas, but one, 
in the same manner as, when the seven prismatic 
colours are presented to the eye in rapid succes- 
sion, the sensation produced is that of white. . . . 
These therefore are cases of mental chemistry, 
in which it is proper to say that the simple ideas 



ASSOCIATIVE GENERATION 31 

generate, rather than that they compose, the 
complex ones," That is from the Logic. 38 
There is a similar passage in the Examination 
of Sir William Hamilton s Philosophy: "If any- 
thing similar to this [that is, to colour mixture] 
obtains in our consciousness generally (and that 
it obtains in many cases of consciousness there 
can be no doubt) it will follow that whenever the 
organic modifications of our nervous fibres suc- 
ceed one another at an interval shorter than the 
duration of the sensations or other feelings cor- 
responding to them, those sensations or feelings 
will, so to speak, overlap one another, and becom- 
ing simultaneous instead of successive, will blend 
into a state of feeling, probably as unlike the 
elements out of which it is engendered as the 
colour of white is unlike the prismatic colours." 39 
It seems to me, however, that associationism has 
here fallen out of the frying-pan into the fire. 
The principle of association, which was to be in 
the world of mind what the principle of gravita- 
tion is in the world of matter, — "Here is a kind 
of attraction," said Hume, "which in the mental 
world will be found to have as extraordinary 
effects as in the natural, and to show itself in as 
many and as various forms," 40 — this principle 
has broken down, and composition has been sup- 
plemented by generation, mechanical mixture by 



32 IMAGEKY AND SENSATIONALISM 

chemical combination. I see no gain; I see 
rather an equal misunderstanding of chemistry 
and of psychology. 41 It is, however, a misunder- 
standing which has been fruitful of bad conse- 
quences, and of which we are not yet wholly 
free. I believe, nevertheless, that experimental 
psychology has, in the main, transcended the 
doctrine of mental chemistry. Colour mixture — 
the illustration chosen by the two Mills and 
before them by Hartley 42 — is, as we all know, 
not a mixture of visual sensations, but the sensory 
resultant of the interplay of excitatory processes 
in the retina. That is a minor matter. But, in 
general, we have better means than a false chemi- 
cal analogy for explaining what cannot be 
explained in terms of a straightforward associa- 
tionism. We have learned, for instance, to make 
allowance for complication of conditions; we do 
not expect, if two sensations are put together, 
to obtain a simple concurrence of their two quali- 
ties; we expect that the synergy of the under- 
lying physiological processes will, in some way, 
become manifest in consciousness. We may 
speak of general attributes of sensation, as 
Ebbinghaus does; or we may speak of Gestalt- 
qualitatj form of combination, funded character ; 
or we may speak of the organisation of elements 
in the state of attention. Different systems deal 



MENTAL CHEMISTRY 33 

with the facts in different ways, and one psy- 
chologist entertains possibilities that another 
rejects; but at all events there is no need of a 
mental chemistry. We have learned, again, that 
physiological conditions may produce their effect 
not within but upon consciousness; that nervous 
sets and tendencies may direct the course of 
conscious processes without setting up new and 
special processes of their own. We have learned, 
also, that such formations as perception and 
action can be understood only in the light of 
their history and development; the life of mind 
is, throughout, subject to a law of growth and 
decay, of gradual expansion and gradual reduc- 
tion; what is now, so to say, a mere tag or label 
upon a dominant formation may, a little while 
ago, have been itself a focal complex, and the 
formation to which it attaches may, a little while 
hence, sink to the parasitic level. We have all 
this knowledge, and much more, to supplement 
what w r e know of the mechanics of reproduction, 
the modern substitute for the laws of associa- 
tion ; and there is, surely, good hope that we may 
work out a psychology of thought without taking 
any such leap in the dark as John Mill took when 
he added generation to composition. — 

I have mentioned two principal differences 
between the older and the newer sensationalism. 

3 



34 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

The experimental psychologist deals with exist- 
ences, and not with meanings; and his elements 
are processes, whose temporal course is of their 
very nature, and not substances, solid and resist- 
ant to the lapse of time. These differences 
illustrate, as they follow from, the more funda- 
mental difference of general attitude. Current 
sensationalism is a result to which we are led by 
empirical analysis, and its sensations are simple 
processes abstracted from conscious experience, 
last terms in the psychological study of mind. 
The associationism of the English school is a 
preconceived theory, and its sensations are, 
accordingly, productive and generative elements, 
first terms in a logical construction of mind. 
Associationism, in other w r ords, puts sensations 
together, as physical atoms or chemical molecules, 
while modern psychology finds sensations to- 
gether in the given mental process. 

This wider consideration brings us now to a 
third principal difference between the two stand- 
points which we are comparing. The sensation- 
alism of modern psychology is simply an heuristic 
principle, accepted and applied for what it is 
worth in the search for the mental elements, — 
whereas the older sensationalism, just because it 
was a preconceived theory, required that the facts 
conform to it, whether they would or whether 



CURRENT SENSATIONALISM 35 

they would not. The Dictionary from which we 
have already quoted defines the Composition 
theory' of mind as "the hypothesis that our 
mental states are the resultant of the varied 
combinations of certain primitive elements. In 
its extreme form it assumes that the ultimate 
units of composition are all of one kind." 43 I 
suppose that the older sensationalism is, strictly, 
an extreme form of this theory; that the units 
which it postulates should all be sensations or the 
ideal derivatives of sensations. James Mill is, 
then, only playing the rules of the game when he 
speaks of pleasure and pain as sensations, and of 
desire and aversion as the ideas of these sensa- 
tions. 44 But, in this matter of the affective 
processes, the majority of present-day psycholo- 
gists have abandoned the strict letter of sensa- 
tionalism; they have placed pleasantness and 
unpleasantness under a separate rubric. No 
doubt, there are some who^ for psychological 
reasons, identify feeling with sensation. The 
demand for that identification comes, however, 
in its most insistent guise, from the outside, — 
from physiology and philosophy. I wish that I 
had time and occasion to speak of our debt to 
physiology, a debt which, in this sphere of sen- 
sation, is especially heavy. But it is clear that 
the physiologists themselves have had no need 



36 IMAGERY AND SENSATIONALISM 

of more than a popular psychology, the mixture 
of faculty-psychology and associationism that 
passes as common sense ; if they psychologise on 
their own behalf, they do so in terms of the or- 
gans of sense and the sensory and associational 
areas of the cortex; and sensationalism appears 
to them to be both logical and adequate. 45 The 
philosophers, the theorists of knowledge, are con- 
cerned with the presuppositions of science, which 
it is their task to classify and to criticise; natur- 
ally, then, they lay greater stress upon formal 
consistency than the psychologist dares or can 
afford to do. 46 For the actual problem before 
psychology is, not the discovery of sensations, but 
the disentanglement of the mental elements. 

What I wish you to remember, therefore, in this 
third place, is that sensationalism is an heuristic 
principle and not a creed. If modern psychology 
is to be termed sensationalistic, that is not be- 
cause it is wedded to sensation. It must mean 
simply that psychology prefers to work with as 
few tools as possible, and that sensation alone, 
or sensation and affection together, seem to give 
it all that it requires for the work of analysis. 
Wundt, for example, will hear nothing of a 
thought-element; his whole psychology, includ- 
ing the psychology of thought, is based upon 
these two elementary processes; and yet, if we 



CURRENT SENSATIONALISM 37 

were classifying systems, we should place him 
rather with the voluntarists than with the sensa- 
tionalists. 47 Could there be stronger evidence 
for the point that I am urging? 

In fine, then, experimental psychology tries to 
save what is psychological from associationism 
on the one hand and from physiological sensa- 
tionalism on the other. Associationism it trans- 
forms and reinterprets from beginning to end. 
It accepts from physiology the view that sensa- 
tions are the outcome of analysis, while it rejects 
or modifies the concrete form in which the view 
is presented, the naive doctrine of psychical cells 
and organs and centres. It saves what it can, 
and adds only where it must ; and for this obedi- 
ence to the law of parsimony it pays a price, 
the price of that mistaken and undeserved criti- 
cism which confuses the new with the old. But, 
on the whole, it finds its account in the saving. 
And if you will avoid the confusion, and are pre- 
pared to agree that the position to-day is, in 
general, as I have described it, then I am ready 
on my side to plead guilty to a 'sensationalistic' 
bias. 



LECTURE II 

"REFERENCE TO OBJECT' AS THE 
CRITERION OF MIND 



LECTURE II 

'REFERENCE TO OBJECT' AS THE CRITERION 
OF MIND 

I MAINTAINED, in the preceding Lecture, 
that it is possible to ideate a meaning, — that 
the meaning, say, of the word 'animal' may be 
given, psychologically, as a visual image which 
appears before the mind's eye when the word is 
presented. This doctrine, now, is open to an 
obvious objection. 'Your word and your visual 
image,' a critic might say, 'are simply two ideas, 
two items of experience regarded, to use your 
own phrase, under the form of existence. But 
two existences do not make a meaning. You 
have only pushed the problem of meaning a step 
further back, from presented word to imaged 
animal; you have still to show how the image 
itself can mean. As a matter of fact, meaning 
consists in reference, reference to the object of 
thought or of idea; and this reference, as an 
author whom you cited very rightly said, can be 
known, but certainly cannot be imaged.' 

But, indeed, I need not quote an imaginary 
critic; I can take the objection, bodily, from a 
recent article. Let me read a few sentences. 

41 



42 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

"The fundamental problem of meaning [is] the rela- 
tion of sign to thing signified, the 'objective reference' 
of the sign. There are passages in Professor James' 
Psychology in which he says explicitly that the objec- 
tive reference of the sign consists in its psychic fringe. 
. . . [But] so long as the fringe is merely a psychical 
fact or occurrence, it seems nonsense to say that it is the 
meaning of another psychical occurrence. It amounts 
to saying that the meaning of a sign is to be found in 
other signs. But where, then, is the 'thing signified?' " x 

I have no wish to slur this objection. I be- 
lieve, in spite of it, that two ideas do, under 
certain circumstances, make a meaning; and I 
shall try, later on, to specify the circumstances. 
In the meantime, however, it seems necessary to 
consider this question of 'objective reference/ 
And I think we cannot do better than go direct 
to those psychologists who make reference to an 
object the criterion of mind, the character that 
distinguishes the mental from the physical, and 
whose classification of mental phenomena de- 
pends accordingly upon the various forms that 
objective reference may take. 



I begin with Brentano. If you turn to the 
table of contents of the Psychologie vom empir- 
ischen Standpunkte, you will find a section en- 
titled "Characteristisch fur die psychischen 



PSYCHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION 43 

Phanomene ist die Beziehung auf ein Object," 
— characteristic of psychical phenomena is their 
reference to an object. The phrase is ambiguous, 
and 'reference to an object' does not mean 
what, at first thought, you would suppose it to 
mean. Read, for instance, Brentano's summary 
of the most notable essays towards a classifica- 
tion of mental phenomena that have been made 
in the history of psychology. They are four in 
number: three of them we owe to Aristotle, the 
fourth to Spencer and Bain. The last-mentioned 
authorities divide mental phenomena into two 
great groups, as primitive and derivative. The 
Aristotelian classifications distinguish, first, psy- 
choses that are and psychoses that are not con- 
nected with bodily processes; and secondly, 
psychoses that are shared by man with the ani- 
mals, and psychoses that are peculiar to man. 
The remaining principle of classification, "which 
at all times has found wide-spread application," 
distinguishes mental phenomena by differences 
in the mode of their intentional inexistence. 2 
Since it is this fourth principle that Brentano 
himself accepts, we shall find in it the meaning 
of that 'reference to an object' which for him 
characterises mental phenomena at large. What, 
then, is this 'intentional inexistence' ? 

"Every psychical phenomenon," Brentano 



44 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

says, "is characterised by what the scholastics 
of the Middle Age have termed the intentional 
• • . inexistence of an object, and what we 
should term . . . reference to a content, 
direction upon an object ('object' not meaning 
here a 'reality'), or immanent objectivity. All 
alike contain within them something as their 
object, although they do not all contain the ob- 
ject in the same way. In idea something is 
ideated, in judgment something is accepted or 
rejected, in love something is loved, in hate hated, 
in desire desired, and so on. This intentional 
inexistence is the exclusive property of psy- 
chical phenomena. No physical phenomenon 
shows anything like it. And we may accord- 
ingly define psychical phenomena by saying that 
they are phenomena which intentionally contain 
an object." 3 In other words, the 'object' to 
which a mental phenomenon refers is not an 
object in the outside world, a physical object in 
our sense, — though Brentano would make it a 
physical phenomenon, — but rather what we 
should term a mental content. Brentano splits 
up idea, judgment, interest, into act and con- 
tent: the act is psychical, the content physical. 
"I understand by idea not that which is ideated 
[the content of the idea], but the act of ideation. 
Thus, the hearing of a tone, the seeing of a 



IMMANENT OBJECTIVITY 45 

coloured object, the sensing of warm or cold, 
[these are psychical phenomena; whereas] a 
colour . . . that I see, a chord that I hear, warmth, 
cold, odour that I sense, these are examples of 
physical phenomena." 4 We shall therefore do 
well to avoid so far as possible, the use of the 
word 'object,' and to speak of the psychical 
phenomenon as evincing* the distinction of act 
and content. 

What shall we say to a view of this kind? 
Well, our. first question may very properly be 
the question of the universality of the alleged 
criterion. All psychical phenomena, says Bren- 
tano, show this immanent objectivity. Now listen 
to Hamilton. "In. the phenomena of cognition, 
consciousness distinguishes an object from the 
subject knowing. This object may be of two 
kinds : — it may either be the quality of something 
different from the ego [object-object]; or it 
may be a modification of the ego or subject 
itself [subject-object] . . . This objectifica- 
tion is the quality which constitutes the essential 
peculiarity of Cognition. In the phenomena of 
Feeling, ... on the contrary, consciousness does 
not place the mental modification or state before 
itself; it does not contemplate it apart, — as sepa- 
rate from itself, — but is, as it were fused into 
one. The peculiarity of Feeling, therefore, is 



46 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

that there is nothing but what is subjectively 
subjective; there is no . . . objectification of any 
mode of self." 5 In Feeling, then, in Pleasure 
and Pain or, as we should say, in pleasantness 
and unpleasantness, we have, according to Ham- 
ilton, psychical phenomena that are not analys- 
able into act and content. If the exception stands, 
Brentano's criterion is invalid. 

Brentano replies, 6 first, that certain feelings 
do, unmistakably, refer to a content, and that 
language indicates this reference. I am glad 
about something, I am pleased at something, I 
am sorry for something. Joy and sorrow, like 
affirmation and negation, love and hate, desire 
and aversion, follow in the train of an idea and 
refer to the content of that idea. But secondly, 
even where the reference is not immediately evi- 
dent, as in the experience of a cut or a burn, 
there is still something more than mere pain (that 
is, unpleasantness) in consciousness. We say: 
I have burned my hand, I have cut my finger; 
spatial localisation is involved, the idea of a 
definite locality. Indeed, there is more than 
that. Just as act and content are implied when- 
ever I say : I see a colour, I hear a tone, so pre- 
cisely are act and content implied when I say : I 
feel pain, or I feel pleasure. The cut or burn 
or tickle is given as content, as a physical phe- 



HAMILTON vs. BRENTANO 47 

nomenon, and the concomitant feeling, the psy- 
chical phenomenon, can be distinguished from it 
by any but the most superficial observer. Feel- 
ing, then, always has a content. 

It is, however, true, thirdly, that the content 
to which a feeling refers need not be a physical 
phenomenon. When I listen to a consonant 
chord, the pleasure that I feel is not so much a 
pleasure in the tones as a pleasure in hearing. 
"Indeed, one might perhaps say, and be right in 
saying, that the pleasure in a certain sense really 
refers to itself, so that Hamilton is more or less 
accurately describing what happens when he de- 
clares that, in feeling, consciousness is fused into 
one." This is a rather puzzling statement; but 
we get light upon it if we turn to Brentano's 
psychology of cognition. Consider what is 
meant, in Brentano's system, by a pleasure in 
hearing. It is act of act : a psychical phenome- 
non takes, as its content, not a physical but an- 
other psychical phenomenon. Can, then, an act 
be the content of another act? Yes: Brentano 
saves himself from the infinite regress of psy- 
chical phenomena by the hypothesis that, for 
example, the idea of a tone (act and content), 
and the idea of that idea (act and act), and the 
idea of the idea of that idea (act and act and 
act) , and so on, are given together in an eigen- 



48 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

thumliche Verwebung, a peculiar interweaving, 
— Hamilton's fusion: the single act of ideation 
has as its content both the physical phenomenon 
of tone and itself, the act of ideation, once or 
oftener repeated. 7 So pleasure may be pleas- 
ure's own content ; and, if so, feeling will always 
be a phenomenon of the subjective-objective, and 
not of the subjectively subjective sort. Besides, 
— here Brentano again resumes the aggressive, — 
the term 'subjectively subjective' is, after all, 
self -contradictory ; for if you have no object, 
then you have no right to speak of a subject. 
And when Hamilton affirms that, in feeling, 
consciousness is fused into one, he is really bear- 
ing testimony against his own position. To get 
a fusion, you must have at least two things to 
fuse; and the two things are, naturally, Bren- 
tano's act and content. 

Hamilton's objection has been met; but I 
question if it has been satisfactorily met. Sup- 
pose that an affective process may stand alone 
in consciousness, without basis or accompaniment 
of sensation. Kiilpe believes that such a state 
of things is possible: "we have feelings which 
are not accompanied by or attached to definite 
sensations, or which arise where the nervous con- 
ditions of sensation are debarred from the 
exercise of their ordinary influence on con- 



THE STATUS OF FEELING 49 

sciousness." 8 Ladd asserts that "the feelings may 
assume either one of the three possible time-rela- 
tions towards the sensations and ideas by which 
we classify them; they may fuse with them in 
the 'now' of the same conscious state, or they 
may lead or follow them." 9 Wundt also believes 
that the affective process may enter conscious- 
ness alone, as the herald of the sensory process 
with which it is connected. 10 Suppose, then, that 
this is the case. Is there any reason for saying 
that the isolated pleasantness is the pleasantness 
of a pleasantness, or the isolated unpleasantness 
the unpleasantness of an unpleasantness? Surely 
there is none, — unless it be that you have to 
save a theory. Surely, it is the theory that reads 
the fusion and the interweaving into what ap- 
pears, introspectively, as an unanalysable ex- 
perience. I am not defending Hamilton's 
terminology, you see; I think, indeed, that the 
less we hear in psychology of subject and object, 
the better for us and for the science. But I 
argue that, if the separate occurrence of affective 
processes is a fact of observation, as Kiilpe and 
Ladd and Wundt testify that it is, then a valid 
exception has been found to Brentano's defini- 
tion of the psychical. We are in presence of a 
psychical phenomenon that is, so to say, all 
act, and has no content. 

4 



50 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

However, I am forced to go farther. I do 
not discover, in my own case, that affective 
processes can stand alone in consciousness. 11 And 
as there are psychologists who agree with me, 
I feel constrained to leave the question open, and 
to consider Brentano's position on its merits. 
My fundamental objection to it may at this 
point be stated very briefly as follows: I think 
that a psychological fact, a datum of observation, 
has been cast, by reflection, into logical form; 
and I think that, here as everywhere, the inter- 
jection of logic has been detrimental to psychol- 
ogy. I come back to this matter later on. In the 
meantime I notice that Brentano himself, who, 
as you will remember, declares that the prin- 
ciple of immanent objectivity "has at all times 
found widespread application" in attempts at 
classification, — I am not now discussing whether 
this statement is right or wrong, — Brentano him- 
self shows that it has led to very different results 
in different hands. 12 Aristotle was satisfied to 
distinguish thought and desire ; the moderns have 
adopted the threefold division into idea, feeling 
and appetition; Brentano throws feeling and 
desire into the single category of interest, and 
recognises judgment as an ultimate form of 
psychosis alongside of idea. Changes of this 
sort seem dictated rather by convenience of logi- 



IMMANENT OBJECTIVITY 51 

cal arrangement than by direct reference to ex- 
perience. It is true that Brentano appeals, even 
more confidently than I am inclined to do, to 
the 'immediate evidence of introspection' and 
the 'judgment of the impartial observer.' 13 This 
is the way of all psychologists when they are in 
straits for an argument, and you must not lay 
too great stress upon either side of the contention : 
the experimental technique for the study of judg- 
ment, in particular, has not yet been perfected. 
But I call your attention to two further points. 
The first is, that Brentano has not yet pub- 
lished his second volume. Since the volume that 
we have dates from 1874, it is only fair to sup- 
pose that its author found it difficult to complete 
his system on the principles adopted at its incep- 
tion. The second is, that Brentano's arguments 
in favor of his criterion are couched in terms 
which themselves imply that criterion. "Let us 
suppose," he says, "that hearing has no other 
content than itself. Still, no one could make the 
same assumption with regard to other psychical 
acts, such as the acts of recollection and expec- 
tation, — the recollection of a past or the expecta- 
tion of a future hearing, — without committing 
himself to the most obvious absurdity." 14 The 
phrase 'hearing has no other content than it- 
self is intended to represent the views of those 



52 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

who, like James Mill,* draw no distinction of 
act and content. I do not think, however, that 
this position is fairly represented by the state- 
ment that 'hearing has no other content than 
itself ; Mill's words have been translated into the 
language of a foreign theory; and it is only 
through the translation that Brentano's parallel 
of present hearing with the recollection of a past 
and the expectation of a future hearing becomes 
relevant. "In themselves," remarks John Mill, 
"[memories and expectations] . . . are present 
feelings, states of present consciousness, and in 
that respect not distinguished from sensations." 15 
Precisely! If you take a memory-consciousness 
and an expectation-consciousness as they are 
given existentially to psychology, you find no 
more reason to distinguish act and content in 
them than you find in the case of sensation.t — 
All that I have said, so far, may be summed 

* Mill takes as illustration the prick of a pin. "Now, when, 
having the sensation, I say I feel the sensation, I only use a 
tautological expression: the sensation is not one thing, the feeling 
another; the sensation is the feeling. . . . The same explanation 
will easily be seen to apply to Ideas. ... To have an idea, and 
[to have] the feeling of that idea, are not two things*; they are 
one and the same thing." That is explicit: and, in his section on 
Hearing, Mill is careful to point out the ambiguity of the term, 
and insists that hearing, as 'the feeling I have by the ear,' is 
'the sensation called a sound.' 

t It is true that John Mill at once loses himself in the episte- 
mological difficulty of "a series of feelings which is aware of 
itself as past and future"; I have said that this confusion of 



CRITIQUE OF BRENTANO 53 

up in a few words. I take the act-and-content 
psychology to be a psychology not of observation 
but of reflection. I note that it has led, in differ- 
ent hands, to very different classificatory systems. 
I think that Brentano found a difficulty in car- 
rying it over from the general to the particular. 
And I regard his criticism of the opposing stand- 
point as unfair, because it implies throughout 
the very distinction which is in dispute. It would 
be satisfactory, now, if we could find a psychol- 
ogy which, without entering upon controversial 
ground, set forth the principles and the facts 
of the science in accordance with Brentano's 
criterion ; the issue would then be narrowed down 
to that of observation and reflection, and we 
could compare the exposition, as a whole, with 
that which we have, for instance, in Kiilpe's 
Outlines or in Ebbinghaus' Grundzilge. 

Such a work we find, in fact, in Witasek's 
Grundlinien der Psychologie, published last year, 

psychology with philosophy is characteristic of the English school. 
But that does not affect the correctness of the psychological posi- 
tion from which he starts. On the other hand, I am not sure that 
his present co-partner in the confusion, Brentano, is not open to 
the further charge of psychological confusion, of confusion within 
the limits of his own definition of the psychical. I am not sure 
that Brentano's parallel of act of memory and act of expectation 
with act of idea can be admitted, even by a psychologist who 
accepts the act-and-content criterion; both the nature of the act 
itself and the relation which it sustains to content appear to be 
widely different in the two cases. 



54 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

— a compact and thoughtful little book, of which 
I should be glad to say pleasant things ; but with 
which I am here concerned only under a single 
aspect, and from whose teaching in that especial 
regard I dissent. Witasek does not, as Brentano 
does, make immanent objectivity the criterion 
of mind; but he asserts that all the funda- 
mental psychical formations, the psychischen 
Grundgebilde, show, "at least in a certain sense," 
the distinction of act and content. He illustrates 
the distinction by reference to idea. There is a 
certain part of the constitution of an idea (Teil 
der Beschaffenheiten einer Vorstellung) by 
means of which it brings a determinate object to 
consciousness ; this is its content. There is also 
a certain respect in which an idea resembles all 
other ideas but differs from formations, like 
feeling and judgment, that are not ideas; a 
respect in which, further, one idea differs from 
another, idea of perception from idea of imagina- 
tion. This second part or aspect of the idea is 
its act. Content and act are inseparably con- 
nected in the idea, and both alike are psychical; 
both, therefore, are to be distinguished from the 
object of idea, which is usually physical. 16 

My first criticism upon this introductory pas- 
sage — in what follows I shall combine criticism 
with exposition of Witasek's system — is that it 



WITASEK ON ACT AND CONTENT 55 

makes the idea the typical, indeed the only full 
and complete, mental process. 17 The funda- 
mental psychical formations are, we are told, of 
two kinds, intellectual and emotional. The in- 
tellectual divide again into ideas and thoughts, 
the emotional into feelings and desires. 18 Now 
at the beginning of the book, the psychical fact, 
the subject-matter of psychology, is defined by 
reference to idea, and the other kinds of psychi- 
cal formation are listed, so to say, in an appen- 
dix. 19 When the distinction of act and content 
is first drawn, we are left 'doubtful' whether the 
content of feeling, wish, etc., is directly or in- 
directly given: given, that is, in the same way 
as content of idea is given with act of idea, or 
given only secondarily, as something that is al- 
ready content of idea. 20 But when we reach the 
special psychology of feeling and judgment, the 
doubt has disappeared. "No content is necessa- 
rily and by its very nature bound up with the act 
of feeling, as content of idea is bound up with 
act of idea ; . . . the act of feeling is a psychical 
formation which brings into consciousness no 
new content of its own." 21 Feeling-content is, 
always, ready-made ideational content: "there 
are no contents, accompanied by feelings, that 
cannot be classified outright as contents of idea." 
The same thing holds of judgment. "In judg- 



56 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

merit, as in idea, we must distinguish the two 
moments of act and content; but while the act, 
which supervenes upon the ideas comprised in 
the judgment, is something novel and peculiar, 
the content of judgment is identical with the 
content of these ideas." Here, it seems to me, 
we have psychology committed to a sensationalism 
or an intellectualism that is far more dangerous, 
because far more closely connected with theory 
of knowledge, than the laboratory sensationalism 
of which I spoke in the last Lecture. The idea, 
let me repeat, is the sole mental process that ful- 
fils the definition of psychical fact ; thought and 
feeling and desire can be brought under the 
definition only by a change in the meaning of 
'content'; intrinsically they are all act, and the 
content upon which their act is directed is con- 
tent that has already been brought to conscious- 
ness by act of idea. I submit that, other things 
equal, that psychology will be preferable which 
refuses thus to prejudice the issue in favour of 
idea, and which places all mental formations, as 
psychical facts, upon the same level. 

My second criticism is this. If, in every type 
of conscious process, you distinguish act and con- 
tent, you have to duplicate your psychology; 
everything must be treated twice over, from the 
point of view of act and from the point of view 



WITASEK ON JUDGMENT 57 

of content. There is, of course, a certain sav- 
ing, if all content is ultimately content of idea; 
but even so you have to treat of the relation of 
the other types of act to this one type of content. 
Things thus become very complicated. Why 
not, you will say, if the psychical facts themselves 
are complicated? Well, I grant that objection; 
my criticism lies farther on. It is that the dupli- 
cation of treatment leads both to over-articula- 
tion and to neglect of analysis. You get too 
many headings, and you are too apt to assumie 
that the processes covered by the headings are 
psychologically irreducible. Let me illustrate 
by reference to Witasek's psychology of judg- 
ment. The act of judgment has, he says, two 
characteristic and essential moments: first, the 
moment of belief, supposition, conviction, and 
secondly the moment of affirmation and nega- 
tion. But there is a further complication. The 
contact (Beruhrung) of ideational content with 
the moment of affirmation-negation gives rise 
to a new quasi-content, the fact which the judg- 
ment affirms or denies, the objective of the judg- 
ment. In order, then, to get a psychology of 
judgment, we have to distinguish act, content 
and object of idea, and twofold act and quasi- 
content of judgment. The objective of judg- 
ment, like the object of idea, is not strictly 



58 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

subject-matter for psychology; it is, however, 
psychologically useful as indicating the way in 
which the act of judgment 'approaches and con- 
nects with' the ideational content of judgment; 
we are able, for instance, by means of it, to psy- 
chologise the difference between the existential 
and the categorical judgment of the text-books 
of logic. 

Both moments in the act of judgment vary in 
this matter of contact with contents. There are, 
further, a qualitative differentiation within the 
moment of affirmation-negation, and an inten- 
sive differentiation within that of conviction. Af- 
firmation and negation are themselves qualitative 
opposites, connected by qualitative transitional 
forms, probabilities, which under favourable 
circumstances are numerically determinable. The 
mention of probabilities leads us, however, to a 
third moment or attribute of certain acts of 
judgment: the attribute of evidence. This may 
be evidence of certainty, correlated with affirma- 
tion and negation, the direct yes and no, or evi- 
dence of probability, correlative with some 
qualitative intermediary between affirmation and 
negation. I understand that the two proba- 
bilities are distinct: that you may have, in the 
act of judgment, both the affirmation of proba- 
bility, so to say, and the evidence of probability. 



WITASEK ON JUDGMENT 59 

Finally, probability itself — one is reminded of 
the White Knight's Song in Through the Look- 
ing Glass! — is the moment of the objective which 
the judgment of probability apprehends. — And 
we have still to consider the moment of convic- 
tion, which belongs with that of affirmation-nega- 
tion to the act of judgment. This moment, as 
I have just said, is intensively, not qualitatively, 
variable; it admits simply of degrees of assur- 
ance, from maximal assurance or positive con- 
viction down to zero assurance or to suspense of 
judgment. The intensive scale of degrees of 
assurance is by no means to be confused with 
the qualitative continuum of probabilities. — 

You will naturally suppose that this account 
of Witasek's psychology of judgment is a mere 
outline, abstracted from a long chapter in which 
the subject is worked out in detail and abun- 
dantly illustrated. Not at all ! I have given you 
the contents of a little less than eight pages. 23 T 
think that those pages suffer from over-articu- 
lation. I think, also, that their author is too 
ready with his acceptance of psychological ulti- 
mates. There are the variable modes of approach 
of act to contents; there is the qualitatively va- 
riable moment of affirmation-negation; there is 
the intensively variable moment of conviction; 
there is the variable attribute of evidence : there 



60 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

are all these things, and they are all ultimate 
and irreducible. No ! I come back to my original 
point: this is a psychology of reflection. You 
must read for yourselves; especially, you must 
assure yourselves that the treatment of judg- 
ment is not exceptional, but typical of the book ; 
you must estimate the system as a whole, and 
compare it as a whole with other systems. In my 
opinion, it is the artificial product of a wrong 
initial attitude; logical construction has fore- 
stalled introspective examination. 24 

I said just now, however, when I was treating 
of Brentano, that it is a psychological fact, a 
datum of observation, that has been thus cast 
into logical form. And while I cannot accept 
the distinction of act and content, I believe that 
the distinction rests upon a truly psychological 
foundation, that the logic is the logic of psy- 
chology. There are, in a certain sense, a hearing, 
a feeling, a thinking, which are distinguishable 
from the tone and the pleasure and the thought. 
Only, the distinction comes to me, not as that of 
act and content, but as that of temporal course 
and qualitative specificity of a single process. I 
entered a plea, in the last Lecture, for a more 
general recognition of the process-character of 
mind; and I suggest here that this character is 
the psychological key to the problem that Bren- 



QUALITY AND DURATION 61 

tano and Witasek seek to solve in terms of act 
and content. The way in which a process runs 
its course, — that is its 'act,' that is what con- 
stitutes it sensing or feeling or thinking; the 
quality which is thus in passage, — that is its 'con- 
tent,' that is what constitutes it tone or pleasure. 
The durational and the qualitative aspects of 
mental experience (I use the term 'qualitative' 
in the widest possible sense) are discriminable as 
aspects, though they are inseparable in fact ; and 
the psychology of act and content does good 
psychological service if we take it to insist that 
the discrimination is essential to a complete analy- 
sis. Experimental psychology, I should readily 
admit, has not hitherto done its duty by dura- 
tion. Nevertheless, we have in the idea of 'pro- 
cess' an instrument of analysis that is adequate 
to its task, and that relieves us from the fatal 
necessity of asking help from logic. 25 

II 

We set out to discuss the views of those psy- 
chologists who make objective reference the 
criterion of mind, the character that distinguishes 
the psychical from the physical. So far, we have 
dealt only with one form of this objective ref- 
erence, — with immanent objectivity, or the ref- 
erence of act to content. We have now to 



62 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

consider another form, which we may perhaps 
designate transitive objectivity. "Human con- 
sciousness/' says Stout, "is normally concerned 
with some object or other. . . . There are three 
ways in which our consciousness is related to 
its object, . • . three ultimate modes of being 
conscious of an object: knowing, feeling and 
striving. . . . The word object must not be taken 
to mean merely material object, but whatever 
we can in any way be aware or cognisant of . . . . 
The object itself can never be identified with the 
present modifications of the individual conscious- 
ness by which it is cognised." 26 "Brentano's 
'object' is ... an appearance in consciousness . . . 
[But] the object as we mean and intend it, can- 
not be a modification of our own consciousness 
at the time we mean and intend it." 27 Witasek, 
too, — you will remember that he does not make 
the distinction of act and content a criterion of 
mind, though the distinction is drawn through- 
out his psychological system, — writes to the same 
effect as follows: "My ideation, my thinking, 
my feeling and my willing are always in their 
own peculiar way 'aimed' at something ; I ideate 
somethings a something that is not ideation, per- 
haps a book; my thinking apprehends things 
that are themselves not thinking, that do not 
belong to mind at all. . . . The same thing holds 



TRANSITIVE OBJECTIVITY 63 

of feeling and willing." 28 "The perceived is 
something different from the perception. The 
former is usually something physical, the latter 
is always psychical. The former is then subject- 
matter for the sciences of external nature, 
physics, chemistry, etc.; the latter belongs to 
psychology." 29 

There is a real and important difference be- 
tween this view and that of Brentano, although 
the two views cross and overlap in a rather puz- 
zling way. Brentano makes the act of idea refer 
to the content of idea ; and he regards the con- 
tent of idea as a physical phenomenon, to be 
studied in its laws of coexistence and succession 
by the methods of natural science. Stout and 
Witasek regard the whole idea, Brentano's act 
and content both, as psychical phenomenon, and 
make this total idea refer to some extra-mental 
object. Witasek, however, keeps the three terms 
distinct: act of idea, content of idea, object of 
idea, all play their separate parts in his system. 
Stout, if I understand him aright, — and Stout 
is one of the men whose visual patterns I find it 
almost impossible to trace, although I get along 
very well with Brentano and Witasek; so that 
I am never quite sure that I have fully grasped 
his meaning, — Stout seems, in general, to run 
content and act together, to consider content as 



64 REFEKENCE TO OBJECT 

simply a specific determination of act; so that, 
for instance, in a visual perception of red we 
have to distinguish, not the act of perceiving, 
the content red, and the red object, but rather a 
redly determined or redly modified perceiving, 
and the red object. 30 However this may be, the 
difference between Brentano, on the one hand, 
and Stout and Witasek, on the other, is, as I 
have said, real and important. 

What, then, shall be our attitude to this extra- 
mental reference, and its claims as criterion of 
mind and as principle of mental classification? 
Well, we might dismiss it at once, solely on the 
ground of the adjective 'extra-mental.' "The 
concept of transcendence," Biihler writes, "has 
no sort of application in psychology. Be the 
object what it may, its determinations cannot be 
presented or given to us, cannot have significance 
for us, unless we are conscious of them. All 
the objective determinations of which I know are 
known in or by modifications of my conscious- 
ness; that is a self-evident proposition. And it 
is only with these modifications that psychology 
is concerned. . . The concept of something that 
transcends itself is just as contradictory in the 
sphere of psychical reality as it is everywhere 
else. Hence the question of transcendence is 
not, as Stout and Hoernle think, a central prob- 



TRANSITIVE OBJECTIVITY 65 

lem of the psychology of thought: on the con- 
trary, it is not a psychological problem at all." 31 
I am afraid that Stout and Hoernle will not be 
so easily convinced. But it is enough for my 
purpose to quote a sentence from Witasek: "This 
[transitive] reference would be puzzling, nay 
more, it would be inconceivable," he says, "were 
we not so thoroughly familiar with it from our 
inner experience." 32 But 'inner experience' is, 
I suppose, identical with 'modification of con- 
sciousness,' in Biihler's sense. The objection is 
too summarily stated ; it must be recast, and more 
carefully phrased, if it is to be effective. 

I shall not attempt its restatement here; nor 
shall I do more than mention, in passing, the 
objection that the rule of transitive reference 
has obvious exceptions. We saw that this ob- 
jection was raised, also, against Brentano's dis- 
tinction of act and content. It may be raised, 
far more cogently, against the distinction of 
idea and object of idea. The feelings, for ex- 
ample, at once suggest themselves, and with a 
greater insistence than before. But, besides the 
feelings, we may instance the organic sensa- 
tions: 33 what is the 'object' of mind in the 
sensation of hunger? — we may instance Bain's 
passive sensibility, 34 and Stout's sentience, or 
mere sensation, or anoetic consciousness; 35 we 

5 



66 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

may instance those faintest sensations which, as 
we know from Kiilpe's experiments, are as 
likely to be subjectified as to be objectified; 36 
we may, perhaps, instance the 'passive contents' 
found by Messer in his experiments by the 
method of the associative reaction, where the 
stimulus-words called up ideas that, intrinsically, 
were well adapted to touch off the response, but 
that, as a matter of fact, lacked all motor ten- 
dency, so that it simply did not occur to the ob- 
server to utilise them for associative purposes. 37 
In all these cases, it might be argued that the 
transitive reference is absent. 

Nevertheless, I think that there is another and 
a bolder line for the objector to take. You will 
remember that Brentano made the distinction 
of act and content a peculiarity of the psychical 
phenomenon; "no physical phenomenon shows 
anything like it." 38 Witasek is just as emphatic 
with regard to transitive reference. "It is strictly 
limited to the psychical domain; search the 
physical world, the world of material things, as 
closely as you will, there is no trace of it to be 
discovered; you find spatial contiguity, spatial 
inclusion, relative movement, all sorts of rela- 
tions, but this inner state of reference to and 
direction upon, this pointing of one thing to 
another, has no place in the scheme. Physical 



THE POINTING RELATION 67 

things stand separate and self-contained; none 
points beyond itself in that peculiar sense which 
is made known to us by ideation, by physical 
phenomena at large." 39 Dogmatic statements of 
this sort are apt to stimulate to the very effort 
that they declare to be impossible. Suppose that 
we do make search, more or less careful, in the 
world of material things, and see if we cannot 
find a pointing, more or less analogous to the 
pointing of idea to its object! 

When I first proposed this task to myself, my 
thought ran at once to cases in which the presence 
of one material phenomenon indicates the pres- 
ence of another. A column of smoke indicates 
the existence of a camp-fire; a drop of the ba- 
rometer indicates a change in the weather. But 
it is soon seen that instances of this kind will not 
serve our purpose. The pointing-relation which 
we are seeking to parallel may, as Witasek says, 
be in consciousness, but it is certainly not for 
consciousness. It is, you will remember, itself 
the criterion of consciousness, the character that 
marks off the psychical from the physical. It 
is intrinsic to mental process; and its analogue 
must be similarly intrinsic to physical process. 
Smoke, now, is a sign or symptom of fire; but 
it is symptomatic only to me, to the mind of the 
observer. We must look further. 



68 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

I thought, in the next place, of the doctrine of 
orthogenesis, defined, in our convenient Diction- 
ary, as "evolution which is definitely directed or 
determinate by reason of the nature or principle 
of life itself." 40 Eimer, the protagonist of this 
doctrine, declares that "organisms develop in 
definite directions . . . through purely physio- 
logical causes." "The causes of definitely di- 
rected evolution are contained ... in the effects 
produced by outward circumstances and influ- 
ences such as climate and nutrition upon the 
constitution of a given organism. . . . Develop- 
ment can take place in only a few directions 
because the constitution, the material composi- 
tion of the body, necessarily determines such 
directions and prevents indiscriminate modifica- 
tion." "The variations in living beings follow 
in perfect conformity to law a few definite direc- 
tions." 41 Eimer 's special views are not popular 
with biologists, since they imply some sort of 
vitalism, and also the inheritance of acquired 
characters. But then, if you object to either or 
both of these implications, you may substitute 
for orthogenesis the doctrine of orthoplasy, of 
"determinate or definitely directed evolution 
under the laws of natural and organic selection." 
"Orthoplasy," — I am again quoting the Dic- 
tionary/' 42 — "emphasizes natural selection work- 



ORTHOPLASY 69 

ing upon variations in many cases screened and 
fostered by the presence of individual modifica- 
tions." It gives you the same result as ortho- 
genesis, without committing you to Eimer's 
interpretations. 

Well! but a 'definitely directed' evolution, 
working itself out in terms of mechanical cause 
and effect: does not that furnish an instance 
of the pointing-relation? Does not every term 
in the evolving series point forward to the next 
following term in a perfectly definite and une- 
quivocal way? I see no escape from that con- 
clusion. And I think that we must go even 
farther. Does not the very notion of an evolu- 
tion imply this relation of forward pointing? 
And since evolution is not confined to the organic 
world, but governs the inorganic as well, are we 
not forced to say that the whole course of nature, 
the entire realm of mechanical causation, mani- 
fests the same relation? If we accept the prin- 
ciple of evolution at all, I see no escape from this 
wider conclusion. 

So we arrive at the position that a pointing- 
towards, a direction-upon, a reference-to, is in- 
trinsic to all natural phenomena. There remains 
the question whether this particular mode of 
pointing is analogous to the pointing of psychical 
phenomenon to its object. And here objection 



70 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

seems in place. The pointing of term to term 
in the evolutionary series represents, so to say, 
a linking together of different things, a passage 
away from one thing and up to another ; and, in 
so far, physical things still "stand separate and 
self-contained," as they do in Witasek's pages. 
Granted that the pointing is intrinsic to natural 
phenomena : nevertheless, the word 'intrinsic' has 
shifted its meaning. The pointing is intrinsic to 
the behaviour of things, of causes and effects; 
but it is intrinsic to the very nature or essence or 
constitution of mind. Our analogy is faulty, 
because it offers what is simply an external char- 
acter in lieu of a constitutive factor. The 
relation of mind to object is more than a mere 
pointing, a Hinweisen; it is also an inneres 
Bezogensein, a relation of necessary implication. 43 
I confess that I cannot meet this objection. 
Even, however, if we were obliged to stop here, 
I think it would have been worth while to remind 
you that the pointing-relation — to take that term 
in its widest sense — is not uniquely an affair of 
mind; that it has an analogue in the external 
world, which appears wherever the law of evolu- 
tion runs. I might have added that, since there 
undoubtedly is a difference between the physical 
and the psychical, the analogy would naturally 
be expected to show imperfection. But let me 



ORGANIC RELATIONS 71 

guide you a step further still. The pointing- 
relation that inheres in mind is a relation, we 
said, of necessary implication. Now think of 
an organism, of the solar system or of the living 
animal. Did not the constitution of the solar 
system point to and imply the existence of 
Neptune; and was not Neptune sought and 
found in consequence? Does not the occurrence 
of some fossil tooth or bone point to and imply 
the existence of a total animal of a certain size 
and shape ; and do we not reconstruct the fauna 
of the prehistoric w r orld accordingly? I am 
speaking, always, of intrinsic pointing and in- 
trinsic implication; I am not concerned with 
the consciousness of the astronomer or of the 
palaeontologist, though it is difficult to phrase 
the illustrations without giving that suggestion. 
The argument is that the constituent parts of 
any organised whole, whether the whole be the 
entire universe of stars or the individual living 
creature, point to and imply one another as such, 
as parts of a whole ; so that we may substitute for 
the analogy of serial linkage, which we just now 
drew from the course of evolution, the better and 
closer analogy of physical organisation. I have 
no liking for vitalism, and I have a definite dis- 
like of teleology; 44 I am thinking solely of a 
world in time, a mechanistic world that is ade- 



72 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

quately described in terms of cause and effect; 
my science is altogether orthodox. But it seems 
to me that the very fact of natural law, of such 
a law as the conservation of energy, means 
organisation ; and that, wherever you have organ- 
isation, you have also this relation of pointing- 
with-implication. And if that relation is not 
identical with the transitive reference of idea to 
object, is it not, at any rate, a near kinsman? 

The analogy may, indeed, be pressed in some 
detail. Every constituent part of an organism 
points to and implies all the other parts. In the 
same way, the ideational process which is the 
vehicle of conceptual meaning is involved in a 
network of reproductive tendencies; it points to 
and implies all the special ideas that fall under 
the concept in question. The transitive reference 
of mind is, therefore, not necessarily a reference 
of one to one but may be a reference of one to 
many. And conversely, one and the same object 
may be signified by many different mental 
processes : precisely as the existence of an undis- 
covered planet, of a certain mass and orbital 
path, may be indicated by various planetary 
irregularities, or a heart of a certain type may be 
variously indicated by a number of fossil remains. 
I have no desire to push these parallels too far; 
but they show — do they not? — that our analogy 



THE POINTING KELATION 73 

from physical organisation is more than external. 

Nevertheless, I fear that many of you have 
found this entire discussion exceedingly crude. 
You have been accustomed to view the transitive 
reference of mind from a philosophical stand- 
point, the standpoint of a theory of knowledge; 
and my quest for its physical counterpart has 
seemed to you to miss the real issue, to shoot 
beside the mark. I must insist, however, that 
this transitive reference is offered by psycholo- 
gists, in works upon psychology, as the psycho- 
logical criterion of mind and as a principle of 
psychological classification. And psychology 
moves upon the plane of natural science, and not 
upon the plane of philosophy. Hence it is upon 
the scientific level that the criterion must be 
tested. If philosophy finds the transitive refer- 
ence of mind unique, psychology as science is not 
bound by that decision, — any more than, if the 
relation appeared as unique in our 'inner experi- 
ence/ this verdict of introspection would be 
binding upon philosophy. Close as the connec- 
tion between psychology and epistemology may 
be, it is, after all, the connection of a special 
science with a general philosophical discipline. 

On the other hand, I must not be unfair to the 
psychologists. The passage which I quoted, 
some time ago, from Witasek, — the passage in 



74 REFERENCE TO OBJECT 

which he declares that transitive reference is 
"strictly limited to the psychical domain," — con- 
tinues as follows. "Here is the most tangible, 
the most characteristic difference between the 
two fields [of physical and psychical], though 
we cannot either say that it is what constitutes 
their essential diversity ( Wesensverschieden- 
heit) ; it, too, is merely an index of this diversity, 
which itself cannot be expressed except by the 
antithesis of material and mental." 45 If, as I 
hope, the term 'essential diversity' does not mean 
ultimate, metaphysical diversity, but simply di- 
versity in first-hand experience, Witasek here 
shows that he would be ready, were proof forth- 
coming, to adopt any other criterion of mind 
which should come nearer than that of transitive, 
reference to empirical reality. 

In the first part of this Lecture I argued that 
the psychology of act and content is a psychology 
of reflection, and that the psychology of process, 
which translates that distinction into terms of 
temporal course and qualitative specificity, comes 
to closer quarters with the subject-matter of the 
science. In the second part I have argued that 
transitive reference cannot be made the criterion 
of mind, since it appears — no doubt with minor 
differences — in every form of organisation. It 
seemed more important to urge this consideration 



TRANSITIVE OBJECTIVITY 75 

than to repeat, mutatis mutandis, what I had 
already said against the doctrine of immanent 
objectivity. In fact, however, I believe that the 
introduction of an 'object' leads to more serious 
consequences, is fraught with greater peril to 
scientific psychology, than the setting off of a 
'content/ It brings us into flat contradiction 
with the results of observation, since many of 
our mental processes are in truth objectless. And 
it must do this, for the reason that its underlying 
assumption is mistaken: it assumes or implies 
that mind is organisation; it thus confuses men- 
tal process with psychophysical process, mind 
with organism, psychology with biology. Not 
mind but man, embodied mind and ensouled 
body, is the subject of which we may predicate a 
transitive reference; 46 if we are dealing in 
abstraction with mind, then our proper business 
as psychologists is simply to describe and to ex- 
plain mind in existential terms. It is matter for 
congratulation that the experimental study of 
the thought processes, now well begun, has made 
a systematically controlled introspection the final 
court of appeal. 



LECTURE III 

METHODS AND RESULTS: THE 
BEWUSSTSEINSLAGE 



LECTURE III 

METHODS AND RESULTS: THE 
BEWUSSTSEINSLAGE 

THOSE of you who follow the progress of 
experimental psychology will remember 
the flutter aroused, some two years ago, by the 
publication of Wundt's critical essay on Aus- 
frageexperimente, on what we may call experi- 
ments by the method of examination. " These 
experiments," we were told, "are not experiments 
at all in the sense of a scientific methodology; 
they are counterfeit experiments, that seem 
methodical simply because they are ordinarily 
performed in a psychological laboratory and in- 
volve the cooperation of two persons, who 
purport to be experimenter and observer. In 
reality, they are as unmethodical as possible; 
they possess none of the special features by 
which we distinguish the introspections of 
experimental psychology from the casual intro- 
spections of everyday life." 1 Yet I was express- 
ing satisfaction, at the end of the last Lecture, 
that the experimental psychology of thought 
had appealed, openly and with confidence, to a 

79 



80 METHODS AND RESULTS 

systematically controlled introspection. Was 
not, then, that self -congratulation a little pre- 
mature? 

To answer this question, we must make a 
critical study of the methods which have actually 
been employed. I cannot go into detail; but I 
can say enough to give you a general idea of 
the way in which the experiments have been 
conducted. 



The methods followed by the two first investi- 
gators, by Marbe in his Experimental Investiga- 
tion of the Psychology of Judgment (1901) and 
by Binet in his Experimental Study of Intellec- 
tion (1903), are extremely simple. Both men 
lay great emphasis upon introspection. We 
want to find out, Marbe says, "what experiences 
must supervene upon a conscious process in 
order to raise it to the rank of a judgment. So 
... we place the observer under conditions in 
which he may experience the most diverse kinds 
of mental process in their passage to judgments 
(die verschiedensten zu Urteilen werdenden 
Bewusstseinsvorgange) 9 and then ask him to 
report what concomitant experiences supervened 
upon those processes, and endowed them with 



MARBE ON JUDGMENT 81 

the character of judgment." 2 I quote Marbe's 
own account of his first experiment. 

"In the first experiment, I placed before the observer 
. . . two objects of the same size and shape but of differ- 
ent weight, and instructed him to lift them in turn to the 
same height with the same hand, and then to invert 
the one that he found the heavier. The act of inverting 
the weight was evidently right if the objectively heavier, 
and wrong if the objectively lighter weight was chosen. 
It was therefore, so far as it came to the observer's con- 
sciousness, a judgment." Marbe has provisionally 
defined the judgment as a conscious process to which the 
predicate right or wrong (richtig or falsch) may be 
significantly applied. 3 "As soon as the observer had 
inverted the weight which he took to be the heavier, he 
was required to report the conscious processes that he 
had experienced after lifting the second weight. He 
was instructed not to confine himself to the experiences 
which ran their course coincidentally with the percep- 
tions that took on the character of judgment, since it 
might possibly be of interest to know what conscious 
processes introduced the act of judgment. The experi- 
ment was performed three times with each observer, one 
or both of the weights being changed in the repeated 
trials. 554 

This procedure is typical of the whole enquiry, 
although Marbe varied his experiments in many 
ways. The observer might be asked, for in- 
stance, to listen to the tone of a tuning-fork, 
and then to sing the same tone as accurately as 



82 METHODS AND RESULTS 

he could; or to add together a pair of numbers 
called out to him by the experimenter; or to 
reply to specific questions regarding articles of 
daily use, well-known facts of history, and so 
forth. He might respond by a gesture, or by a 
Yes or No, or he might simply answer to him- 
self, mentally, without expression. In every 
case, he was required, at the end of the experi- 
ment, to give a full introspective account of his 
experience. 5 

Binet's work is mainly taken up with an 
analysis of the intellectual processes of his two 
little girls, aged respectively fourteen and a half 
and thirteen years. 6 "It has been my aim," he 
writes, "to give a wider scope to introspection, 
and to carry investigation into the higher mental 
phenomena, such as memory, attention, imagina- 
tion, the course of ideas. . . . All the experi- 
ments that I have made upon ideation have called 
for no more elaborate apparatus than a pen, a 
supply of paper, and a great deal of patience; 
they have been made outside of the laboratory." 7 
The experiments are of the kind known as men- 
tal tests. Thus, the observer, seated with pen 
and paper before her, receives the instruction: 
Write down twenty words. The time required 
for the completion of this task is noted, privately, 
by the experimenter. When the words are 



BINET ON INTELLECTION 83 

written, the experimenter takes the paper, and 
comments as follows: 

"I am going to ask you a question about these words 
that you have written. You know that you may write 
a word quite mechanically, without thinking of any- 
thing; or you may write the word and think of the 
thing it stands for, but without thinking of any par- 
ticular thing, — you just think of something, a table, 
perhaps ; or again you may write the word and think of 
some particular thing, like our table in the dining-room. 
Now as I read off these words that you have written, 
you will tell me exactly which of these three classes it 
belongs to: whether you wrote it without thinking of 
anything, or whether you just thought of something, or 
whether you thought of some particular thing. 5 ' 8 

The words are then read off, one by one; the 
observer explains the meaning which she attached 
to them, and how they were suggested to her; 
and the report is taken down in full, narrative 
and question and answer, by the experimenter. 

This procedure, again, is typical of the whole 
enquiry, though a great variety of tests was 
employed. Thus, words were read or shown by 
the experimenter, and the observer reported how 
she understood them, what idea they aroused in 
her ; sentences were written down by the observer 
at command, or sentences begun by the experi- 
menter were completed by the observer; compo- 
sitions were written upon assigned subjects; 



84 METHODS AND RESULTS 

recollections were called up; objects and events 
were described. The experiments upon atten- 
tion included the cancellation test, tests upon 
direct memory of series of figures, tests of the 
time of simple reaction. Finally, a series of 
tests was devoted to memory, — memory of iso- 
lated words, of poetry, of objects, of narrative 
prose, of pictures, of spatial magnitudes, of 
time intervals. And the results, viewed always 
in the light of the introspective records, are 
made the basis of a differential characterisation 
of the two youthful observers, — furnish, so to 
say, psychological portraits of two types of 
intellection. 9 

Diff erent as these French and German meth- 
ods are, they both strike the note of experimental 
simplicity; instruments have practically disap- 
peared, and the outcome depends altogether 
upon the tact of the experimenter and the intro- 
spective capacity of the observer. Marbe worked 
with professors and instructors and graduate 
students whose ability and integrity are above 
question ; Binet, who himself displays keen 
psychological insight in the application and inter- 
pretation of his tests, pays a deserved tribute to 
the psychological qualifications of Marguerite 
and Armande. 10 Now, however, the instru- 
ments, for a time, come back again. The German 



WATT ON THOUGHT 85 

studies of the next three years — Watt's Experi- 
mental Contributions to a Theory of Thought 
(1904), Ach's Volition and Thought (1905), 
and Messer's Experimental Investigation of 
the Psychology of Thought (1906) — employ 
the Hipp chronoscope and its most modern 
accessories. 

Watt worked by the method of the associative 
reaction. Familiar substantives, printed black 
on white, were shown to the observer, who replied 
by uttering an associated word. The associa- 
tions were of the sort termed, technically, the 
'partially constrained' : the observer was required, 
in six different series, to associate to the visual 
word a superordinate, coordinate, or subordi- 
nate idea, or a whole, a part, or another part of a 
common whole. Watt is able to utilise the times 
of reaction in various ways; but he also pays 
special attention to the introspections. "After 
every experiment the observer reported the whole 
contents of his experience, and made any re- 
marks upon it that he pleased. The report was 
at once written down in full by the experimenter, 
and was occasionally extended by appropriate 
questioning." 11 Moreover, at the conclusion of 
the principal experiments, 

"Series were taken with all the observers, in which they 
were instructed to make a particular stage of the course 



86 METHODS AND RESULTS 

of reaction the object of an especially careful observa- 
tion. It seemed best to mark off four of these stages: 
the preparation for the experiment, the appearance of 
the stimulus-word, the search for a reaction-word (if 
such search occurred), and lastly the cropping-up of 
the reaction-word. . . . The method was eminently 
successful. The restriction to a single phase of the 
complicated process of reaction enabled the observers to 
introspect more carefully and with better result." 12 

It is upon these introspections that Watt bases 
the theory of thought with which his dissertation 
concludes. 

Ach is concerned, primarily, with the analy- 
sis of voluntary action, and treats of the psy- 
chology of thought only in so far as it is involved 
in that analysis. We must, however, take ac- 
count of him, first, because his incidental contri- 
bution to our subject is important, and secondly 
because he names and fully discusses the method 
of 'systematic experimental introspection.' 13 
Ach distinguishes, in every psychological experi- 
ment, a fore, mid and after period. The fore 
period covers the time from signal to stimulus. 
The mid or principal period is occupied by the 
experience upon which the experiment is ex- 
pressly directed. The after period is a time of 
indefinite duration, but certainly lasting several 
minutes, which follows immediately after the 
conclusion of the experiment. The method of 



ACH ON THOUGHT 87 

systematic experimental introspection requires 
that the events of the fore and mid periods be 
introspectively examined, as a whole, during the 
persistence of the perseverative tendencies in the 
after period. 14 Introspective observation is thus 
confined to what a psychologist of the 'image- 
mongering' type 15 would be apt to term, with 
Fechner, the memory after-images of his experi- 
ence. 16 Moreover, if the introspective report is 
to be complete and unequivocal, the experimenter 
must come to the help of the observer ; there must 
be free exchange of question and answer ; so that, 
as Ach remarks, "in this method of systematic 
experimental introspection, the experimenter 
plays a more prominent part than in any other 
psychological method." 17 Ach himself employs 
the method in a series of experiments upon 
simple and compound reactions, — and he could 
hardly have chosen a more promising field. For 
although Kiilpe said as long ago as 1893 that 
"reactions are nothing else than exact types of 
. . • voluntary action, ... so that their mere 
duration is but a small part of their psychological 
significance," 18 and although Wundt has repeat- 
edly endorsed this statement, 19 no one before 
Ach had made any serious attempt to build up a 
psychology of volition upon the introspective 
data which the reaction experiment affords. 



88 METHODS AND RESULTS 

Messer's work may be regarded as a continu- 
ation and extension of Watt's. He begins with 
experiments on 'free' association, — a word is 
shown, and the observer, having read and under- 
stood it, replies by uttering the first word that 
occurs to him. 20 The following series distinguish 
between association of ideas and association of 
objects: thus, the word being shown, the observer 
is required to name, in one set of experiments, a 
coordinate object, in another, a coordinate idea; 
or in one set to name a character of the idea 
expressed by the word, and in another to recall 
and to characterise a particular object that falls 
within the range of its meaning.* Further series 
set more complex tasks to the observer. Thus, 
two names are shown — names of philosophers, 
artists, statesmen — and the observer is instructed, 
first, to compare them objectively, to pass judg- 
ment upon their relative merits, and secondly to 
say which of the two he himself agrees with or 

* Instances of coordinate objects are duck-swan, hand- foot; 
the associated object (swan, foot) belongs with the object denoted 
by the stimulus-word (duck, hand) to a whole (a pond, the 
observer's body). Instances of coordinate ideas are cellar-vault, 
piano-violin; the associated idea (vault, violin) belongs with the 
idea expressed by the stimulus- word (cellar, piano) to the same 
general idea or Oberbegrif (underground chamber, musical 
instrument). Instances of idea and character are country- fertile, 
shop-full; of idea and character of some particular object, river- 
wide, shop-pretty (externalised visual idea of a particular river, 
of a particular florist's shop). 



MESSER ON JUDGMENT 89 

prefers. Or again, objects, or pictures, or 
printed sentences of philosophical import are 
laid before him, and he makes a remark about 
them, or gives his opinion of them. In experi- 
ments of this latter sort the chronoscope is re- 
placed by a stop-watch, which is started when the 
object or sentence is exposed and stopped as soon 
as the observer begins to speak. 21 — It is clear, I 
think, that Messer's problem grew as his work 
progressed. Watt and Ach seem to have begun 
with their programme pretty clearly in mind, 
and to have followed it out pretty much as they 
had planned ; Messer seems to be led from experi- 
ment to experiment by the suggestion of his own 
results. 22 The consequence is that his pages are 
by no means easy reading; one is conscious of a 
certain lack of logical coherence as one passes 
from section to section ; while, on the other hand, 
as a mine of introspective information, his paper 
is perhaps the most valuable of those issued from 
the Wiirzburg laboratory. For after every ex- 
periment of every series — there were fourteen 
series in all — the observer "reports the whole 
contents of his experience from the appearance 
of the stimulus-word to the moment of reac- 
tion."* When occasion arises, questions are put 

* Messer's paper fills 224 pages of the Archiv f. d. ges. 
Psychologic, and at least a half of these are in fine print. There 



90 METHODS AND RESULTS 

by the experimenter: Messer, however, unlike 
Ach, makes but sparing use of this means of 
obtaining information. 23 

We come now to the Ausfragemethode proper, 
to that method of examination which Wundt 
condemns as a mere travesty of the experimental 
procedure. In 1907 Biihler published the first 
installment of his Psychology of the Thought- 
Processes: Facts and Problems \> — the article 
Ueber Gedanken, On Thoughts. His problem 
is very general : What do we experience when we 
are thinking? To solve it, he says, the prime 
necessity is, to make your observers think. And 
to make them think, he reads to them some 
aphorism of Nietzsche, some couplet from 
Riickert, or puts some question suited to their 
temper and attainments. The question is always 
answerable by Yes or No : Was the Pythagorean 
proposition known in the Middle Ages? Can 
our thought apprehend the nature of thought? 
Does Monism really involve the negation of per- 
sonality? The aphorisms are thrown into ques- 
tion-form by a preliminary: Do you understand? 

can be no doubt that the method of 'systematic experimental 
introspection,' whatever its advantages, runs to bulk. If it comes 
into general use, and still more if, as Ach proposes, the conversa- 
tions between experimenter and observer, the introspective inter- 
views, are taken down by the phonograph and stored for future 
reference, we shall be forced to employ a staff of 'introspective 
computers' to render our materials manageable. 



BUHLER ON THOUGHT 91 

Do you agree with this? — For example: Is this 
true? 'To give every man his own were to will 
justice and to achieve chaos'; Do you grasp this? 
'Thinking is so extraordinarily difficult that 
many a man had rather pass judgment.' The 
harmless necessary stop-watch is started as the 
stimulus begins, and arrested as the observer 
replies by Yes or No. When the answer has 
been given, the observer undertakes a descrip- 
tion, as accurate as possible, of his experience 
during the experimental period. 24 Buhler, like 
his predecessors, lays great stress upon the atti- 
tude of the experimenter and the introspective 
calibre of the observer. The experimenter must 
be in full sympathy with his observers; he must 
think, by empathy, as they think, understand as 
they understand, speak in their language. And 
the observers themselves must be picked men, 
sujets Selection: Buhler had seven at his dis- 
posal, but relies exclusively upon the reports of 
the two most experienced, Kiilpe and Diirr, 25 — 
I give a single instance of question and report. 

Can our thought apprehend the nature of thought? — 
Observer K. 'Yes.' 6 sec. — The question struck me 
comically at first; I thought it must be a trick ques- 
tion. Then Hegel's objection to Kant suddenly occurred 
to me, and then I said, decidedly: Yes. The thought 
of Hegel's objection was fairly full; I knew at the 



92 METHODS AND RESULTS 

moment precisely what the whole thing was about ; there 
were no words in it, though, and there were no ideas 
either. Only the word 'Hegel' came up afterwards, in 
auditory-motor form. 26 

I should mention here that Woodworth, in 
1906, had already used a method of question and 
answer, although apparently in cruder form. 
The observer was required to answer such ques- 
tions as : Which is the more delightful, the smell 
of a rose or its appearance? Who was the great- 
est patriot of Hungary? What is the difference 
between similarity and congruity? Should a 
man be allowed to marry his widow's sister?* 
As soon as the answer was given, or sometimes 
before, the experimenter broke in, and demanded 
a description of the process of seeking and find- 
ing the solution of the problem. "The intro- 
spection may be made more reliable by calling 
for answers to very definite questions, as: Any 
visual picture? Any words heard? Any feeling 
of bodily movement?" For example: 

What substances are more costly than gold? — Dia- 
monds. — I had no visual image of the diamond; the 
thought of diamonds was there before the sound of the 
word. You don't think of the words you are going to 
say before you say them. It is the same way in con- 
versation: you know what you want to say, but the 

* I may be obtuse : but I confess that I can find in this question 
no food for thought. 



BUHLER ON THOUGHT 93 

words come so quickly that you don't have a chance to 
think of them before you say them. 27 

If this is not Biihler's method, it is at any rate 
a link which connects his work, at the one ex- 
treme, with that of Marbe and Orth, at the other. 
Orth I have not before mentioned ; he performed, 
in 1903, some experiments that will presently 
occupy our attention.* 

In a later publication (1908) , Biihler describes 
experiments on thought-memory, which are based 
upon a method akin to Miiller and Pilzecker's 
Treffermethode, or method of right associates. 
A series of twenty paired titles, as we may call 
them, is read to the observer: — the point of 
Archimedes, the egg of Columbus; destruction 
of the Phoenician sea-power, fate of the Spanish 
Armada ; and so on — with the instruction that the 
two topics are to be connected in thought. Then 
the first members of the pairs are repeated, in a 
different order, and the observer seeks to recall 
their thought-associates. The procedure is modi- 
fied in various ways. Thus, a list of half- 
sentences is read, in a certain order; the observer 
listens and understands. Then the list of com- 
plementary half -sentences is read, in another 
order, and the observer is asked to complete each 
one, as it comes, by reproducing the appropriate 

*p. 102. 



94 METHODS AND RESULTS 

term of the first list. Or a series of brief, pro- 
verbial expressions is read without other instruc- 
tion than that the observer is to listen and 
understand. Then a second series is read, with 
the instruction that he is to recall an expression 
of similar tenor from the first series. For in- 
stance: 'When the calf is stolen, the farmer 
mends the cow-house' is paralleled, in the second 
series, by: 'When the wine is running in the 
cellar, everybody goes to look after the cask.' 
Or, finally, a list of thoughts, more or less aphor- 
istic in form, is read and understood; then a 
catch-word is given, and the observer tries to 
recall the complete thought. In all these experi- 
ments, full introspective reports are taken. 28 

So far, then, there has been nothing new in 
the technique of this work upon thought. We 
have the familiar method of mental tests; we 
have the method of reaction, reduced in Marbe 
and Orth, Woodworth and Biihler to its lowest 
technical terms, but still recognisable for what 
it essentially is; 29 and we have the memory 
methods. The two methods that remain to be 
considered, methods described in 1908 by S tor- 
ring and Woodworth, are still of the reaction- 
type. Storring showed his observers a card, 
upon which were printed the premisses of a syl- 
logism. The observers were instructed not to 



CRITICISM 95 

hurry, but to draw the conclusion from the 
premisses with the consciousness of absolute cer- 
tainty. The time from the exposure of the card 
to the first utterance of the observer was mea- 
sured by a stop-watch. The syllogisms ranged 
in difficulty from U is left of L, F is left of U, 
therefore . . . ' to 'No k belongs to the genus s; 
all / belong to the genus k; therefore . . . ' 30 
Woodworth employed, not the syllogism, but 
the rule-of -three. He asked such questions as: 
London is to England as Paris is to — ? The 
hand is to the fist as a nation is to — ? The 
observers supplied the missing term, and re- 
ported, as Storring's observers did also, upon 
their experience during the solution of the 
problem. 31 — 

I fear that this account of methods has been 
tedious ; I have given it, in order that you might 
have some ground upon which to base your judg- 
ment of results. My own opinion, which I must 
here state briefly and dogmatically, is as follows. 
I think that Marbe and Binet made a good be- 
ginning: though I must add that, when I read 
Marbe, I took his procedure to represent rather 
the temporary poverty of the Wiirzburg labora- 
tory than any act of free choice ; and that, when 
I read Binet, it never occurred to me to regard 
his conclusions as final, or in fact as anything 



96 METHODS AND RESULTS 

more than problems set to future analysis. I 
think, further, that the investigations of Watt 
and Ach constitute the logical continuation of 
the inquiry thus begun, and that in 1905 the 
outlook for an experimental psychology of 
thought was distinctly promising. The time had 
come for putting the subject into commission. 
Unfortunately, Messer attempted to cover the 
whole ground, and his task was too great for 
him. Still more unfortunately, Buhler gave a 
turn to the inquiry which, in my judgment, has 
served to retard rather than to advance the prog- 
ress of our knowledge. 

Do I not then believe, after all, in a method 
of systematically controlled introspection? Very 
emphatically I do: with all my heart, with all 
my mind, and with all my strength. My belief 
in introspection is old enough to have attained 
its majority; for it was in 1888, when for the 
first time I was reading James Mill's Analysis, 
that the conviction flashed upon me — 'You can 
test all this for yourself!' — and I have never 
lost it since. But the question here is, not 
whether we believe at large in a method of ex- 
perimental introspection, but whether the special 
methods followed by Messer and Buhler are ade- 
quate to their task. I remarked just now that 
Messer's paper is a mine of introspective infor- 



CRITICISM 97 

mation. So it is: but on a number of not very 
closely articulated problems. Messer, if I read 
him aright, — and I hope that I am not doing 
him injustice, — failed to get his bearings in the 
wide field that he had undertaken to survey; he 
worked piecemeal. The observations that he 
took in this way are valuable, both positively 
and negatively, by what they say and what they 
omit ; and their value is largely due to the sepa- 
rateness, the discreteness, of the problems at- 
tacked; you may almost say, if you will, that 
Messer's work is valuable because he was forced, 
against his intention, to see many issues where 
Watt and Ach had seen but one. Nevertheless, 
all the work must be done over again. It is, of 
course, easy to be wise after the event; and we 
must remember that, just as Ach wrote too early 
to take account of Watt, so Messer wrote too 
early to take account of Ach. 32 But we who 
come later can see very clearly that, with Watt 
and Ach, the time for a single-handed grappling 
with the psychology of thought had passed. 
Part-problems were now the order of the day: 
part-problems, attacked by every refinement of 
technique that laboratory experience could sug- 
gest ; part-problems, with rigorous technical con- 
trol of the introspections. We get, instead, — 
with Messer, a series of studies more or less 



98 METHODS AND RESULTS 

discrete, broken aspects of the whole offered for 
clear vision of a part ; with Biihler, a revolution- 
ary attempt to rewrite the psychology of thought 
from the beginning. And while Watt and Ach 
could use their chronoscope times to good sys- 
tematic purpose, Messer is content at first merely 
to mention them and later to drop them alto- 
gether, and Biihler so shapes his method that 
anything like an experiment in the ordinary 
sense of the term, any regulation or regular 
variation of conditions, is impossible. 

II 

To criticise further at this point would be to 
anticipate, I pass to a consideration of the prin- 
cipal results of these experimental investigations 
of the thought processes ; and I begin with the 
discovery of the Bewusstseinslage. 

You will remember that Stout, in his Analytic 
Psychology (1896), maintained the occurrence 
in consciousness of 'imageless thought/ "There 
is no absurdity," he says, "in supposing a mode 
of presentational consciousness which is not com- 
posed of visual, auditory, tactual and other ex- 
periences derived from and in some degree 
resembling in quality the sensations of the 
special senses; and there is no absurdity in sup- 
posing such modes of consciousness to possess 



ANGELL vs. STOUT 99 

a representative value or significance for 
thought." 33 In controverting this position, 
James Angell gives some illustrations of imagery 
from his own experience. 

"When the process is that of apprehending a sen- 
tence, I find in my own case the imagery involved is 
frequently constituted by a matrix of vague, shifting, 
auditory word images, in which some significant word 
is likely to be most prominent, and which is accompanied 
by a tingling sense of irradiating meaning, which, if 
the sentence comes to a full stop, is likely to work itself 
out in associated images of a fairly definite type." 

"In those cases where we hang upon the dying sound 
of the word or its fading visual characteristics, without 
clear-cut imagery dissevered from the perceptual pro- 
cess itself, there is often present ... a definite (quasi- 
affective) attitude of familiarity with the word, and a 
feeling of placid conviction that at any moment the 
explicit associates which give it meaning could, if neces- 
sary, be summoned before us." 34 

These accounts, I say, are offered as illustra- 
tions of the imagery which in a particular mind 
serves as the psychological vehicle of thought. 
Stout, however, replies that the 'tingling sense of 
irradiating meaning' and the 'placid conviction' 
that the associates can be explicated are pre- 
cisely the sort of thing that he wishes to empha- 
sise in his doctrine of imageless apprehension. 
He even rubs it in: " 'Irradiation/ " he says, "is 
a particularly good word." 35 Well! my own 



100 METHODS AND RESULTS 

point is that these experiences are also precisely 
the sort of thing that the German investigators 
designate as Bewusstseinslage, an almost un- 
translatable term, meaning something like pos- 
ture or attitude of consciousness. 

The word Bewusstseinslage was first em- 
ployed, at Marbe's suggestion (1901) , by Mayer 
and Orth, who had undertaken a qualitative 
study of association by the word method. These 
investigators found that the association might be 
direct, from word to word, or indirect, by way 
of interpolated processes. And they divide the 
interpolated processes into three classes: ideas, 
volitions, and Bewusstseinslagen. In their own 
words : 

"Besides ideas and volitions, we must mention a third 
group of facts of consciousness, which has not received 
sufficient emphasis in current psychology, but whose 
existence has been impressed upon us again and again 
in the course of our experiments. The observers very 
often reported that their experience consisted of certain 
conscious processes which obviously refused description 
either as determinate ideas or as volitions. Thus, Mayer 
observed that the hearing of the word Versmaass [metre] 
was followed by a peculiar conscious process, not char- 
acterisable in detail, to which the spoken word trochee 
was associated. In other cases the observer was able to 
furnish some description of these facts of consciousness. 
Orth, for instance, observed that the word mustard 



MARBE ON ATTITUDE 101 

touched off a peculiar process which he thought might 
be characterised as the 'suggestion of a familiar form 
of expression.' Then came the associated word gram. In 
all such cases the observer was unable to find in conscious- 
ness the least trace of the ideas which he afterwards 
employed in his report to describe the facts of experi- 
ence. All these conscious processes we shall include, 
despite their evident and often total differences of 
quality, under the single name of conscious attitudes. 
The introspective records show that the conscious atti- 
tudes were sometimes affectively toned, sometimes com- 
pletely indifferent." 36 

Marbe's own experimental study of judgment 
(1901) helps us in two ways to a further under- 
standing of the conscious attitudes. It gives 
us, first, a long list of indicative terms. In a few 
cases the observers can say nothing more of their 
attitudes than that they are peculiar, or indefi- 
nite, or indescribable ; but for the most part they 
are able to characterise them in a more positive 
way. And it gives us, secondly, hints of the be- 
haviour of the attitudes in the general flow of 
consciousness, hints of their relation to other and 
better known conscious processes. 

The attitude most frequently reported is that 
of doubt, with the cognate forms of uneasiness, 
difficulty, uncertainty, effort, hesitation, vacilla- 
tion, incapacity, ignorance, and the opposite ex- 
periences of certainty, assent, conviction that a 



102 METHODS AND RESULTS 

judgment passed is right or wrong. To the 
old-fashioned psychologist all these terms have 
an emotive ring, and it is worth noting that the 
same observers refer to surprise, wonder, aston- 
ishment, expectation and curiosity as emotions. 
But there is another group of attitudes that do 
not carry the emotive suggestion. These are 
described, in confessedly roundabout phrase, as 
remembrance of instructions, remembrance that 
one is to answer in sentences, recollection of the 
topic of past conversations, realisation that non- 
sense-combinations have been presented earlier in 
the experimental series, realisation that sense or 
nonsense is coming, realisation that a certain di- 
vision will leave no remainder. Here we are in 
the sphere of intellection. And the general beha- 
viour of the attitude appears to consign it to that 
sphere. For it may be affectively toned or it 
may be affectively indifferent ; it may be touched 
off, associatively, by an idea, and it may form 
part of an ordinary associative complex; it may 
be attended to, and it may be forgotten. In 
a word, it behaves just as ideas behave. 37 

Orth, in his Gefuhl und Bewusstseinslage 
(1903), — the study to which I referred a little 
while ago,* — brings the conscious attitudes into 
relation with James' fringes, with Hoff ding's 

* P. 93. 



ORTH AND ACH ON ATTITUDE 103 

quality of familiarity, 38 and with many of 
Wundt's feelings. When, for instance, Wundt 
declares that feeling is the pioneer of knowledge, 
or that a novel thought may come to conscious- 
ness first of all in the form of a feeling, 39 he is, 
in Orth's opinion, referring in fact not to feel- 
ing proper but to conscious attitude. For the 
rest, Orth asserts that these attitudes, however 
widely they may differ in other respects, have in 
common the character of obscurity and intangi- 
bleness ; they cannot be further analysed. When 
we name them, or seek to describe them, we are 
simply translating, substituting known for un- 
known; in actual experience, the attitudes are 
peculiar modifications of consciousness, which 
cannot be identified wdth sensation or idea or 
feeling. Many of them consist in a sort of di- 
rect apprehension; but in any case, and alto- 
gether apart from this function, they appear 
to be more closely related to cognition, and thus 
to sensation, than to feeling. 40 

We come next to Ach (1905), who gives us 
both a classification and a theory. In the ex- 
perimental after-period, the period of introspec- 
tion, Ach's observers often reported that a 
complex conscious content was simultaneously 
present as knowledge, — as a Wissen* 1 or what 



104 METHODS AND RESULTS 

James calls a knowledge-about as distinguished 
from a knowledge of acquaintance. 

"At the end of the experiment, that is, at the begin- 
ning of the after-period, the observer frequently has a 
peculiar consciousness of what he has just before ex- 
perienced. It is as if the whole experience were given 
at once, but without a specific differentiation of the 
contents. The entire process, according to the report 
of one observer, is as if given in a nutshell." 42 

This imageless presentation of a total knowl- 
edge-content is termed by Ach Bewusstheit, 
awareness. And awareness is of two principal 
kinds : awareness of meaning, and awareness of 
relation. Awareness of meaning is always ac- 
companied or preceded by some sensation or 
image, which * 'constitutes the imaginal represen- 
tation in consciousness of the content imagelessly 
present as knowledge," and thus stands as sym- 
bol of the meaning-content. 43 Suppose, for 
instance, that I am reading a paragraph, quickly 
but understandingly, and that I come to the 
word 'bell.' Under other circumstances, if the 
word had a special significance or if it stood 
alone, I might take its meaning imaginally; a 
group of apperceiving ideas — the idea of its 
sound, the visual image of a bell — might spring 
up and assimilate it. As it is, the apperceiving 
masses are not realised ; the meaning of the term 



ACH ON AWARENESS 105 

is present simply as an awareness. The visual 
word-form 'bell' rouses a number of associated 
ideas to a state of preparedness, gets them ready, 
so to say, to make their appearance in conscious- 
ness; or, to speak in physiological terms, stirs 
up a number of reproductive tendencies. The 
associated ideas need not actually appear; the 
reproductive tendencies need not discharge their 
full function; the half -arousal, the subexcita- 
tion suffices to set up a determinate, unequivocal 
reference, which manifests itself in conscious- 
ness as knowledge or meaning. 44 That is Ach's 
theory. We are looking, if you like, at a sailor 
standing alone by the helm of his vessel. But 
that innocent-looking steersman is a pirate; he 
is in league with a numerous crew who are 
crouching, repressed but alert, behind the bul- 
warks; his association with them constitutes him 
a pirate ; they give him his meaning. Now, per- 
haps, an impatient head shows over the side. 
Likely enough! but its appearance does not 
change the meaning of the figure in the stern; 
our friend is no more a pirate than he was be- 
fore; his Begriff is the same, only that it has 
acquired an explicit Merkmal. 

Since awareness has degrees of intensity, and 
these degrees must have their psychophysical 
substrate, Ach defines Bewusstheit as a progres- 



106 METHODS AND RESULTS 

sive function of this subexcitatory state of the 
reproductive tendencies. 45 He makes no attempt 
to work out a complete classification, but calls 
attention at once to two transitional forms be- 
tween awareness of meaning and awareness of 
relation. The first is the awareness of determi- 
nation, our immediate knowledge that the present 
flow of mental processes is or is not directed by 
some preconceived purpose, or some foregone 
suggestion or instruction. 46 The second, which 
is in reality a special case of determination, is 
the awareness of tendency, a general knowledge 
that the course of consciousness is determined, 
without specific representation of its direction 
or goal; such awareness as we have when we say 
'It is on the tip of my tongue,' or 'I know there's 
something that I haven't done.' 47 The aware- 
ness of relation itself Ach identifies with Marbe's 
Bewusstseinslage. It is true, of course, that 
reference or relation is also involved in the aware- 
ness of meaning ; the arousal of the reproductive 
tendencies implies that the sensation or idea is 
given to consciousness in a network of relations. 
But the reference here is forward, to a fact of 
the future, to the ideas which are making ready 
to cross the conscious limen; in the awareness of 
relation the reference is backward, to some con- 
tent of a previous consciousness. Instances may 



ACH ON AWARENESS 107 

be found in surprise, perplexity, doubt, and in 
the opposite states of satisfaction, certainty, 
relief, — names that are already familiar to us 
from Marbe's list of conscious attitudes. In all 
these cases, Ach says, we are eingestellt, predis- 
posed or adjusted, to receive a certain impression. 
An impression comes, and either fulfils or inter- 
feres with this predisposition; but, whatever its 
character, it is spontaneously referred to some 
fact of our past experience. 48 

I wish that Ach had discussed, even schematic- 
ally, the psychophysics of the Bewusstseinslage, 
of this awareness of relation. He does not: and 
I can only guess that he would regard the inde- 
terminate play of reproductive tendencies as the 
ideal limit towards the one extreme, the extreme 
of 'meaning,' and the single function of what he 
calls the determining tendencies 49 as the ideal 
limit towards the other extreme, the extreme of 
'relation,' — while in fact every case of either 
type of awareness will require the cooperation, 
in varying measure and in various complication 
with other psychophysical factors, of both sets of 
tendencies. However this may be, his theory of 
meaning is explicit, and he tells us that meaning' 
grades off into 'relation' through intermediate 
forms. 

Messer (1906), like Ach, offers us both a 



108 METHODS AND RESULTS 

classification and a theory, though his classifica- 
tion is more and his theory is less detailed. He 
distinguishes a group of intellectual and a group 
of emotional attitudes; the former are matters 
of understanding, pure and simple, the latter are 
complicated by affective and volitional mo- 
ments. 50 So far, we are on psychological 
ground. When, however, he comes to distin- 
guish the sub-classes under these two main head- 
ings, Messer forsakes psychology for logic. 
Anything and everything that can be made the 
topic of thought may appear, he says, in the 
form of a conscious attitude; hence, if we classify 
by topic, we obtain an 'extraordinary variety' of 
attitudes; hence, again, a full survey is impos- 
sible, — we can only fall back on logic, upon fun- 
damental and formal distinctions. 51 Logic, it is 
true, is not psychology; logic, indeed, abstracts 
from the very things that psychology investi- 
gates, "ob und wie [ein Denk] inhalt in einem 
menschlichen Bewusstsein reprasentiert ist"; 
nevertheless, a logical classification may be of 
great assistance to psychology, may even help 
toward that goal of psychological ambition, a 
psychology of the categories. 52 

'But why go to topic at all?' the psychological 
reader may exclaim; 'why not try a psychologi- 
cal classification?' Well, there the psychological 



MESSER ON ATTITUDE 109 

reader, as we shall see in the next Lecture, has 
his finger on a very sore point of method. 
Messer is making the best of a bad job; he 
appeals to logic because he has nothing else to 
appeal to. And so he classifies his intellectual 
attitudes as those of reality, of spatial proper- 
ties and relations, of temporal properties and 
relations, of causal connection, of teleological 
connection, and of logical relation (identity and 
diff erence, whole and part, etc. ) . Similarly, the 
emotional attitudes are those which have as their 
content the relation between the subject and the 
object of thought (familiarity, value) ; those 
which contain, further, an objective relation to 
the task set by the experimenter to the observer 
(appropriateness, relevancy, correctness) ; and 
those in which this supervening relation to the 
task in hand shows merely as a subjective state 
(question, reflection, doubt, assurance, ease, per- 
plexity, etc.). 53 

All this does not greatly help us. It is, how- 
ever, worth while to note that Messer's intellec- 
tual attitudes correspond to Ach's awareness of 
meaning, and Messer's emotional attitudes to 
Ach's awareness of relation, and thus to the 
original Bewusstseinslagen of Marbe and Orth. 
Indeed, the correspondence is, for psychological 
purposes, almost too exact ; it suggests a common 



110 METHODS AND RESULTS 

logical principle rather than a common outcome 
of introspection. For that matter, Messer ob- 
literates the psychological difference almost as 
soon as he has described it. The emotional 
attitudes, he explains, are those in which an 
affective moment of pleasantness-unpleasantness 
is usually reported by the observer, or in which 
we may trace the influence of 'will,' in the sense 
of a causal activity on the part of the psycho- 
physical subject. But feeling and will are merely 
concomitants of the attitude. Attitude itself is 
always intellectual. We may, perhaps, call it 
'thought' when the complete explication of its 
topic or content requires one or more sentences, 
and we may call it 'meaning' when it carries the 
content of single words or phrases ; we may thus 
dispense altogether with what was, from the be- 
ginning, merely a provisional term. 54 

So we find in Messer a classification borrowed 
and adapted from logic; a classification based 
on the presence or absence of affective and voli- 
tional concomitants ; and a classification in terms 
of the relative simplicity or complexity of the 
content or topic of thought. His theory of atti- 
tude is summed up in a single sentence. "[I 
assume] that the real psychical processes which 
underlie an explicitly formulated thought may 
run their course in all sorts of abbreviated forms, 



MESSER ON ATTITUDE 111 

telescoping into one another, making various 
demands upon the store of psychophysical 
energy." 55 For 'real psychical processes' we 
may here substitute 'cerebral disposition.' Mes- 
ser's theory then becomes practically identical 
with Ach's. "The unconscious real processes that 
underlie understanding" — Ach's reproductive 
and determining tendencies — "occur in various 
degrees of intensity, according to circumstances, 
. . . and consequently throw more or less light 
(einen verschiedenen Reflex) into consciousness, 
are consciously represented in different degrees 
of clearness, from distinct verbal ideas down 
to unanalysable attitudes." 56 Ach had pointed 
out that our awareness of meaning always in- 
volves a process of what he terms associative 
abstraction; the associative relations that mani- 
fest themselves in consciousness as meaning are 
those of the greatest regularity, of most frequent 
occurrence; accidental and occasional associates 
are aroused but little, if at all, in the stirring up 
of the reproductive tendencies. 57 Messer — and 
this is one of the most valuable features of his 
work — supplements Ach by pointing to trans- 
itional forms, by showing the various stages of 
Entfaltung, of development or elaboration, that 
a thought-process may pass through in con- 
sciousness. Thus a visual idea (we are dealing 



112 METHODS AND RESULTS 

with visual ideas considered as vehicles of logical 
meaning) may begin as a mere 'feeling of visual 
direction/ vague and inchoate to the last degree, 
and may grow during the experiment to a pic- 
ture of almost hallucinatory clearness; 58 and 
the meaning of a word has a continuous scale of 
representations in consciousness, from the zero- 
point of inseparable fusion with look or sound 
of the word itself up to distinct realisation as 
a group of visual and verbal associates. 59 Atti- 
tude, the background of meaning or reference 
against which a mental process is seen, may be 
just a glow or halo of indiscriminable conscious- 
ness, or may be as articulate as the background 
of cherubic faces upon which Raphael painted 
his great Madonna. 

Messer's series of transitional forms are, how- 
ever, logical rather than psychological; the 
members of the series are, as a rule, selected 
from the mass of introspective material and ar- 
ranged in order by the writer. It is, plainly, 
very desirable that the transition should be 
observed within a single mind. That, it seems 
to me, is one of the part-problems most obvi- 
ously suggested by the work of Watt and Ach, 
— a systematic study of the genesis of conscious 
attitude from explicit imagery. 60 

Here, then, we may for the present leave the 



MESSER ON ATTITUDE 113 

Bewusstseinslage. Watt and Biihler employ the 
term, but in such intimate connection with a 
theory of thought that we must postpone their 
discussion to the next Lecture. Binet, too, gives 
illustrations of imageless thought that must un- 
doubtedly be classed with the conscious attitudes. 
The word 'to-morrow,' for instance, aroused in 
one of his observers a 'thought' which she defines 
as "something that you can translate by words 
and feelings ; something vague ; it is too difficult 
to describe": 61 evidently, a Bewusstseinslage of 
meaning. But I have given you enough, both of 
instances and of theory; you know what the 
facts are, and you know the attempts that have 
been made to explain them. We pass, therefore, 
to the consideration of thought itself. 



LECTURE IV 

METHODS AND RESULTS: THE 
THOUGHT-ELEMENT 



D 



LECTURE IV 

METHODS AND RESULTS: THE 
THOUGHT-ELEMENT 

ESCARTES, as we all know, laid some 
stress, in his philosophy, upon the fact of 
thinking. And the Cartesian psychology dis- 
tinguishes between thinking in images and pure 
thinking, between imagination as the faculty of 
the picturable and pure intellection as the faculty 
of the unpicturable. 1 The modern notion of an 
'imageless thought,' as we find it in Stout and 
Binet, evidently harks back to this doctrine, 
while the concepts of 'awareness' and 'attitude,' 
as used and explained by Ach and Messer, offer 
a compromise between the intellectualism of 
Descartes and the sensationalism of Locke— or, 
as we might here say, the sensationalism of 
Aristotle. 2 We have now to ask whether the 
theory of 'imageless thought' is borne out by the 
results of experiment, is attested by a controlled 
introspection. 

Marbe (1901) offers a provisional definition 
of judgment as a conscious process to which the 
predicate right or wrong may be significantly 
applied, and tries to find out what experiences 



118 METHODS AND RESULTS 

must supervene upon conscious processes in or- 
der to make this predicate applicable, to raise 
them to the rank of judgments. 3 He reports 
no less than eight series of experiments, carried 
out by various modifications of the method which 
I have already described; and his results are 
flatly and unexceptionally negative. The observ- 
ers discover, much to their own astonishment, that 
"there are no psychological conditions of judg- 
ment, whatever the experiences may be that in 
the particular case pass over into judgment (zum 
Urteil werden)"* And what holds of the pri- 
mary experience of judgment holds also of the 
understanding of judgments already formulated: 

"The understanding of judgments, read or perceived, 
does not depend upon psychological facts, that are 
bound up with the reading or perception of the judg- 
ments. In like manner, the read or perceived judgments 
are not bound up with different experiences, according 
as we are able or unable to appraise them; nor are they 
connected with different conscious processes according 
as we pronounce them, in the particular case, to be 
right or wrong." 5 

Marbe is led by these results to modify his 
definition of judgment. "All experiences may 
become judgments, if it lies in the purpose (A b- 
sicht) of the experiencing subject that they shall 
accord, either directly or in meaning, with other 



MARBE ON JUDGMENT 119 

objects." 6 Only, as the experiments prove, the 
purpose of the subject need not be conscious. 
You say to a painter: "That's much too dark!" 
— and he, with some impatience at your sim- 
plicity, replies: "Of course it is; I made it 
too dark on purpose"; but he had no explicit 
purpose in his mind as he painted. In this sense, 
judgments may be regarded as purposed ex- 
periences; the end, in whose interest the experi- 
ences are evoked, is their accordance, direct or 
through meaning, with the objects to which they 
refer. 7 As for the understanding of a judg- 
ment, that is simply our knowledge of these 
objects that, in the purpose of the judging sub- 
ject, are to accord with the judgment or with its 
meaning. 8 Or, since knowledge is never given 
in consciousness (ein Wissen ist niemals im Be- 
wusstsein gegeben), 9 — remember that Ach and 
Biihler are still below the horizon! — our under- 
standing of a judgment is simply our capacity 
of experiencing certain other judgments; a ca- 
pacity which depends, like musical ability, upon 
physiological dispositions, and which comes 
to consciousness only in its particular man- 
ifestations. 10 

There is, then, so far as appears in these 
experiments, no psychological judgment-process, 
nothing that in direct experience marks a judg- 



120 METHODS AND RESULTS 

merit as judgment. If we call the observers' 
consciousness a judgment-consciousness, we do 
so for extra-psychological reasons, because we 
take it to be guided and directed by an uncon- 
scious, dispositional 'purpose/ Marbe declares 
expressly that no hint of the purpose shows in 
the observers 5 own reports. 11 

This negative result of Marbe's investigation 
is pronounced by Watt to be "extraordinarily 
important. For it constitutes an unanswerable 
argument against any theory which maintains 
that, in order to judgment, this, that or the other 
conscious experience is or must be psychologi- 
cally realised." 12 Marbe, however, confined him- 
self to an introspective examination of the 
contents of consciousness in the interval between 
stimulus and reaction. Watt takes into account, 
further, the period immediately preceding the 
stimulus, the period of preparation for the reac- 
tion; and what he there finds turns out, also, 
to be extraordinarily important. "Marbe," he 
says, "has no psychological criterion of a judg- 
ment; I have one, and one only, — the task or 
problem (Aufgabe) ." 13 "What transforms into 
judgments the mere sequence of experiences that 
we discover when we analyse the processes of 
judgment, and what distinguishes a judgment 
from a mere sequence of experiences, is the 



MARBE ON JUDGMENT 121 

problem." 14 Watt's observers, you will remem- 
ber, were instructed beforehand that they were 
to associate part to whole, or subordinate to 
superordinate idea; in every experimental series 
a determinate task or problem was set them; 
and it is the influence of the problem that raises 
the associative consciousness to the rank of judg- 
ment, so that, as Watt puts it, "all my experi- 
ments were judgments." 15 Marbe's observers 
were also engaged upon tasks or problems. But 
the nature of these tasks was extremely simple. 
Moreover, the instruction given by the experi- 
menter restricted their field of observation, as I 
said just now, to the mid experimental period. 
For one or both of these reasons, the Aufgabe, 
as psychological criterion of judgment, failed to 
make itself apparent. 

That is straightforward enough. But one 
wishes that Marbe had taken account of cases 
in which a purpose is present in consciousness, — 
that he had arranged experiments in which a 
purpose should be overtly realised by the ob- 
servers. The existence of purpose, he says, is 
essential to judgment; and he adds only that an 
Absichtlichkeit "need not be demonstrable in 
consciousness," 16 and that in fact no reference 
is made to purpose in the introspective reports 
before him. Watt finds that the Aufgabe may 



122 METHODS AND RESULTS 

come to consciousness immediately after the ex- 
posure of the stimulus-word, though normally- 
it does not. 17 It is useless to speculate on what 
Marbe might have found, had he carried his 
experiments a little further ; but it is surprising, 
and somewhat puzzling, that he does not make 
conscious purpose, where it occurs, a psycho- 
logical criterion of the judgment. 

Watt, on his side defines "a judgment or an 
act of thought as a sequence of experiences 
whose procession from its first term, the stimulus, 
has been determined by a psychological factor 
[that is, by the problem]. As conscious experi- 
ence, this psychological factor is itself past and 
gone, but it still persists as an appreciable influ- 
ence." 18 I do not, however, understand this to 
mean that the Aufgdbe must be antecedently 
conscious on every occasion when it is effective. 
Let me read another passage: 

"A preparation that is common to all problems 
alike," says Watt, "consists in a certain adjustment of 
the body. The observer directs his gaze, more or less 
attentively, and in a state of expectation that is ac- 
companied by strain sensations of more or less vivacity, 
upon the screen that conceals the stimulus-word. Now 
he will say the name of the problem two or three times 
over to himself: subordinate idea, superordinate idea, 
find a part, etc. ; perhaps he will think of two or three 
instances. This process is fairly clear in consciousness 



WATT ON AUFGABE 123 

at the beginning of the series, and especially on the 
change to a new problem ; but it weakens with time, so 
that in the second or third experiment the name of the 
problem is said once only, and finally internal speech 
lapses altogether and the conscious tension almost wholly 
disappears. All that remain, therefore, is the adjust- 
ment of the body — the fixation of the screen, the 
approach of the lips to the voice-key, etc. — and a state 
of faint expectancy. This is the course of events when 
the problem is easy and the observer has grown used to 
the experimental procedure." 19 

It seems, then, that the problem must have 
been fully conscious, as specific problem, at some 
past time, if the present experience of the ob- 
server is to be a judgment; but that it may, 
with repetition, tend more and more to disappear ; 
so that finally nothing is left of its specific 
determination, and judgment is touched off 
mechanically, automatically, so to say reflexly, 
by the experimental surroundings. It seems 
that we have, in the sphere of thought, precisely 
what we find in the sphere of action. The skilled 
pianist had, once upon a time, to learn his notes ; 
now he sits down to the instrument, and plays 
mechanically, automatically, so to say reflexly, 
in a certain key and at a certain tempo. 

Messer makes the point more explicit. In- 
stead of waiting till the association has been 
eff ected, he now and again interrupts an experi- 



124 METHODS AND RESULTS 

ment at the end of the fore period, and asks the 
observer to describe the contents of conscious- 
ness. Sometimes the problem is clearly there; 
sometimes, however, the report runs: "Problem 
not in consciousness; I simply thought, It's 
taking a long time," or "No repetition of prob- 
lem, only attention to the apparatus." 20 Messer 
applies this result as follows: 

"We may say in general that many of the 'problems' 
that give direction to human activity have this char- 
acter of the obvious, and in so far of the unconscious, 
and that philosophical reflection and self-examination 
are needed to raise them into the clear light of con- 
sciousness. 

"Among these 'problems' that are wholly matters of 
course to us, and for which we are so to say continually 
predisposed, we may without any question place the 
problem of the cognition of real things, that is, of giving 
such a form to our perception, thought and speech that 
they are adequate to real things, whether we are con- 
cerned with the persistence, properties, states, changes, 
relations or value of the real. Just because this pre- 
disposition is altogether accustomed and obvious, it will 
not of itself and unaided come to consciousness as what 
it is." 21 

"This relief of consciousness," he goes on, "the 
gradual mechanising by practice of processes 
that at first demanded effort of attention and 
consideration from various points of view, is 



WATT ON AUFGABE 125 

one of the most firmly established results of 
psychology." 22 

It is always difficult, as we read a series of 
works upon a given subject, to assign their 
just dues, enough and not too much, to the 
earlier authors. I think, as Messer himself 
thinks, that this notion of an unconscious, merely 
dispositional problem was clear to Watt. It is 
also clear to Ach, who, however, believes that 
determination of consciousness is accompanied, 
practically without exception, by an awareness 
of determination, 23 and who in so far challenges 
Marbe's introspections. Nevertheless, there can 
be no doubt that the work of the later investi- 
gators, Ach and Messer, has made the relation 
between Watt and Marbe much closer than 
Watt realised when he wrote his paper. 

We may conclude our present account of 
Watt's theory by quoting from his own summary : 

"The reproductive tendencies represent the mechan- 
ical factor in thinking, while the problem is what makes 
it possible that ideas shall be significantly related." 24 
"There are, then, three fairly well-defined spheres of 
influence : that of the reproductive tendencies themselves, 
the ground and basis of everything else ; that of the 
problem; and that of the coconsciousness and cocon- 
scious activity of problem, on the one hand, and of 
contents, that may be relatively independent, on the 
other." If we seek to relate these three spheres of in- 



126 METHODS AND RESULTS 

fluence to the theory of apperception, we may say that 
"to the first belongs the process known as apperceptive 
choice (die sog. Wahl einer apperzeptiven Tdtigheit); 
to the second, whatever in the modern idea of appercep- 
tion is derived from the apperception of the Herbartian 
psychology; and to the third apperception proper, the 
core or nucleus of the Wundtian doctrine." 25 

Ach we may dismiss still more briefly, since his 
exposition, so far as concerns our present topic, 
is in close agreement with that of Watt. The 
observer's consciousness, during the fore period, 
is dominated by a purpose (Absicht). The idea 
of end, the Zielvorstellung, subexcites its corre- 
lated reproductive tendencies, and is therefore 
accompanied by an awareness of meaning. The 
tendencies so aroused are, further, brought into 
relation with the idea of object, the Bezug- 
vorstellung, which they accordingly influence in 
the sense of the idea of end. "The establishment 
p{ these relations between idea of end and idea 
of object I term a purpose." 26 We should thus 
have, as constituents of the purpose-conscious- 
ness, the idea of end, given, perhaps, in terms of 
internal speech; the awareness of the meaning 
of this idea ; the awareness of the idea of object; 
and, I suppose, the awareness of the relations 
obtaining between the two ideas, of end and of 
object. We may also have, Ach says, a relation 



ACH ON DETERMINING TENDENCIES 127 

to the future, since the purpose is directed upon 
the perception of object which the future is to 
bring. 27 

The idea of end is, evidently, very much the 
same thing as Watt's Aufgabe, and the relation 
which the idea of end sustains to the present 
idea and future perception of object covers much 
the same ground as Watt's cooperation of prob- 
lem and stimulus. The idea of end is also, like 
the Aufgabe, the point of departure of deter- 
mining tendencies. Although it seldom appears 
in consciousness when the object is perceived, 
the stimulus presented, it nevertheless determines 
our reaction upon the object. Suppose, for ex- 
ample, that the stimulus consists of the figures 
6 and 2, divided by a vertical line — 6|2. Accord- 
ing as the task prescribed is addition, subtraction 
or division, the ideas reproduced by the stimulus 
will be 8, 4 or 3; the Aufgabe, the Zielvorstel- 
lung — itself unrepresented in consciousness — has 
raised to supraliminal intensity the single repro- 
ductive tendency that accords with the purpose 
of the observer. 28 "These dispositions, uncon- 
scious in their operation, which take their origin 
from the meaning of the idea of end and look 
towards the coming perception of object, — these 
dispositions," says Ach, "that bring in their train 



128 METHODS AND RESULTS 

a spontaneous appearance of the determined 
idea, we call determining tendencies." 29 

All this might easily be translated into Watt's 
terminology: so easily, that we are likely to 
forget the difference of subject-matter, to forget 
that Watt is dealing with the judgment, and 
Ach primarily with the voluntary action. That 
difference comes back to us with a sort of shock, 
and, when it comes, sets up the Bewusstseinslage 
of doubt. How can the concepts of purpose 
and problem be adequate to the psychology of 
thought, if they serve equally well for the psy- 
chology of volition? 

So we are obliged — there is no help for it — 
to start over again, and to scrutinise the defini- 
tions of judgment offered by Marbe and Watt. 
And it seems to me that a very brief scrutiny 
shows these definitions to be too wide. "All ex- 
periences may become judgments," Marbe told 
us, "if it lies in the purpose of the experiencing 
subject that they shall accord, either directly or 
in meaning, with other objects." 30 Now let me 
read you a significant passage from his book: 

"The purpose that is characteristic of judgment, the 
accordance of the experiences or their meanings [with 
the objects to which they refer], may be effective only 
secondarily, alongside of other purposes. When, for 
instance, an actor is playing a part, he utters words 



MARBE ON JUDGMENT 129 

which he intends to agree with the words chosen by the 
dramatist. But as he speaks, he is pursuing a whole 
number of other purposes. He aims to impress his hearer 
in various ways ; he tries, perhaps, to sink himself wholly 
in his part, . . . and so on. When experiences are 
evoked in this way, when the purpose that is character- 
istic of judgment is forced into the background by 
other, concomitant purposes, it hardly seems correct 
to term the experiences judgments. Or take another 
example. In some of our experiments, the observer was 
asked to sing a tone of the pitch of a given tone, and 
no one would hesitate to call the tone sung a judgment. 
But we should hesitate to say of a singer who took the 
part of Lohengrin that he had, by his singing, judged 
rightly or wrongly. Nevertheless, there is no sharp line 
of distinction between our experiment with the sung 
tone and the case of this opera singer that should lead 
us in the one instance to speak of judgment and in the 
other not. The fact is that, as the purposes concerned 
in the origination of an experience (over and above the 
purpose that is characteristic of judgment) become 
more and more numerous, w r e grow less and less inclined 
to consider that experience as a judgment." 31 

Does not that sound a little apologetic? Surely, 
it is not impossible that an actor should read his 
part with the single-minded purpose of express- 
ing his author; surely, it is not impossible that 
he should take it mechanically, as a matter of 
course, because he is an actor and that is the 
part to take, — precisely as Marbe's observers 
sang the tone because they were psychological 



130 METHODS AND RESULTS 

observers and that was the tone to sing. These 
things are possible. And, on the other hand, a 
plurality of purposes is not fatal to judgment. 
You may review a book in order to show that 
you think it important, in order to make its 
writer better known, in order to see your own 
name in print, in order to earn some money: 
your estimate of it is still right or wrong. Un- 
less, then, we give up altogether the attempt 
to mark off judgment as a special subject of 
psychological inquiry, we must say that Marbe's 
definition is too wide. 

Watt defines judgment as "a sequence of 
experiences whose procession from its first term, 
the stimulus, has been determined by a psycho- 
logical factor now past as conscious experience, 
but persisting as an appreciable influence," 32 
and declares that 'all his experiments were judg- 
ments.' 33 But then one rather wonders if there 
is anything in the mental life, of the sequential 
type, that is not a judgment. In reproducing 
a series of nonsense-syllables, for instance, the 
observer is determined by the Aufgabe; and it 
may be questioned whether the same thing does 
not hold — I quote Ach's examples — of the freest 
play of imagination and the most abstract form 
of aesthetic contemplation. Messer points a like 
criticism by reference to gymnasium work. The 



WATT AND MBSSER ON JUDGMENT 131 

instructor formulates the exercise in some stereo- 
typed phrase, and then counts one, two, three; 
the exercise is gone through at the word of com- 
mand. Here, then, w r e have a sequential expe- 
rience that is conditioned upon the stimulus, the 
number called, and that takes place under the 
persistent influence of a foregone conscious ex- 
perience, the hearing of the original prescrip- 
tion. And so a raising of the arm or a bending 
of the body would be a judgment. 34 

Well ! what, then, does Messer offer by way of 
definition? His observers were instructed, from 
the first, to "understand by judgment that pro- 
cess of thought which finds its complete linguis- 
tic expression in a predicative proposition 
(Aussagesatz) , which must, of course, be sig- 
nificant." 35 And when he examines the intro- 
spective reports, Messer discovers — what the rest 
of the world would probably have expected, but 
what apparently comes to him as a pleasant sur- 
prise — that the observers agree in their view of 
the essential character of the judgment con- 
sciousness. It is essential to judgment, they 
say, "that a relation between stimulus-idea and 
idea of response, a relation that is more partic- 
ularly characterised as a relation of predication 
{Aussage-Beziehung) , shall be willed, 'intended/ 
or at any rate accepted (anerkannt) ." 36 But a 



132 METHODS AND RESULTS 

significant relation of predication was what they 
had been told to find; and when we remember 
that three of the six observers (Watt himself was 
one) had taken part in Watt's investigation, that 
two of the three had acted as observers for Ach, 
and that the work was done, largely with Watt's 
apparatus, in the laboratory in which Watt's 
study had just been completed, 37 we shall hardly 
be overwhelmed by the 'willed' or 'intended.' I 
do not say that Messer is wrong; but I gather 
that he took out of his experiments, in this re- 
gard, pretty much what he put in. However, 
it is more important to consider his analysis. 

What, first of all, of the relational experience? 
Can it be analysed? The observers were not 
able to define it positively in its specific charac- 
ter (die Beziehung in seiner spezifischen Eigen- 
art positiv zu bestimmen) . They did, in some 
cases, distinguish it from the attributive relation : 
attribution narrows consciousness, restricts the 
sphere of meaning, predication extends it: but, 
even so, "the limits between predicative and at- 
tributive relation are fluctuating (fliessend) ." 
On the whole, then, "the exact analysis and char- 
acterisation [of this relation] must be left to 
later investigators." 38 The willing or intending, 
on the other hand, is ordinarily a matter of the 
problem set to the observer by the instruction 



MESSER ON JUDGMENT 133 

of the experimenter, — "on the assumption, of 
course, that the observer understands the instruc- 
tion and has the 'will' to react in accordance 
with it." 39 

So far, therefore, we have Watt's Aufgabe, 
and the experience of a predicative relation. 
Marbe had no psychological criterion of judg- 
ment; Watt had one; Messer has two. But 
Messer seeks, further, to bring the Aufgdbe- 
psychology into relation with the objective ref- 
erence of the Austrian school. I am not sure 
that I wholly understand him; but I will give 
you what I take to be his meaning. 

Ordinarily, Messer says, in the everyday life 
of mind, our experience is intentional, directed 
upon objects. 40 This reference is due to an 
Aufgabe, the normal, self-evident and therefore 
unconscious purpose 'to cognise.' 41 Now this 
natural and normal attitude of mind may or may 
not be carried into the laboratory. We exchange 
it for an unusual and, in a way, artificial atti- 
tude when we are studying sensations and ideas 
(that is, reproduced sensations or reproduced 
complexes of sensations) ; we seek, in their case, 
to describe consciousness as it is, to discriminate 
the qualities of conscious contents; the contents 
themselves, and not their meanings, are in the 
focus of attention. 42 Contrariwise, we retain it, 



134 METHODS AND RESULTS 

and we must retain it, when we are studying 
the processes of cognition, perception and 
thought (judgment) ; we have, in their case, to 
take account of the fact of transcendence, of 
the things and the properties of things to which 
the cognitive experiences refer. "The psycholo- 
gist who should suppose that perception and 
thought may be adequately characterised by the 
simple ascertainment of the sensations and ideas 
present in consciousness would be like a man 
who should seek to apprehend the real nature of 
money by simply investigating the materials of 
which money is made." 43 

The nature of the Aufgabe, then, is of very 
great importance. The Aufgabe of existence, 
with its consequent internal predisposition (Ein- 
stellung), gives us the psychology of sensation 
and idea and the association of ideas; gives us, 
among other things, Ebbinghaus' work on mem- 
ory. The Aufgabe of objective reference, with 
its predisposition, gives us the psychology of 
perception and judgment. The shift from this, 
the customary attitude of everyday life, to the 
other, the unusual attitude of the descriptive 
psychologist, is justified on two grounds: first, 
because it ensures an exact psychology of the 
processes investigated ; 44 and secondly, because it 
brings to light what otherwise, from sheer force 



MESSER ON JUDGMENT 135 

of habit, we should have overlooked, — e.g., the 
"peculiar experience of specific conscious qual- 
ity" 45 that forms part of the judging conscious- 
ness, the volition or intention of the introspective 
reports. For transcendence or intentional rela- 
tion inheres in thought as conscious experience: 
we have only to lay an associative reaction and a 
judgment reaction side by side, and it appears 
at once. If Marbe's observers missed it, that was 
because their problems were not sufficiently 
varied. Marbe himself implies it, when he says 
that "all experiences may become judgments if 
it lies in the purpose of the experiencing subject 
that they shall accord with other objects"; for 
this statement, translated into other terms, means 
precisely what we have already said, — that the 
obvious and therefore unconscious purpose of 
cognition is decisive for the judgment-character 
of experience. 46 

In summary, therefore, we have in the judg- 
ment, first, the experience of a predicative rela- 
tion; secondly, the control or direction of the 
course of consciousness by an Aufgabe that 
usually does not show in consciousness; and 
thirdly, the qualitatively specific experience of 
willing or intending the predicative relation, due 
to the fact that the Aufgabe is that of objective 
reference, that the 'purpose 5 of the observer is 



136 METHODS AND RESULTS 

'to cognise.' But the relation, you will remem- 
ber, is not necessarily willed or intended; it may 
be merely accepted. What does this mean? 

It means that we are to go the whole way with 
Brentano's school, and to distinguish act and 
content, — or rather, in this case of judgment, act 
and objective. 47 Primarily, Messer says, the 
distinction is concerned only with the signifi- 
cance or meaning of the judgment, and is there- 
fore logical, not psychological. Nevertheless, it 
comes into psychology, if only in secondary 
fashion. For whenever a judgment, a predica- 
tion, is questioned, tested, examined by the judg- 
ing subject, then act and objective, acceptance 
or rejection and matter accepted or rejected, 
appear in psychological guise, as discriminable 
factors of his experience. 48 If, then, the Aufgabe 
has not been fully effective; if the volition or 
intention has, for some reason or other, failed 
of realisation, so that the peculiar quale of the 
judging consciousness is absent, and the observer 
turns round upon his Aussage in critical mood; 
then the judgment may be completed by the 
specific act of acceptance. 

I have stated Messer's position as accurately 
as I can. But I do not find it clear. I have the 
impression that he is confusing two different 
things: the nature of mental experience as de- 



MESSER ON JUDGMENT 137 

termined by various problems, and its nature as 
given apart from any problem. I can see that 
the setting of a problem might, as Ach says it 
does, 49 lead to novel modes of mental connection; 
I cannot see how it should actually generate a 
specific conscious quality. I fail, also, to see 
the ground of Messer's classification of the sub- 
ject-matter of psychology. Memory is, surely, 
as intentional as perception or thought. If, not- 
withstanding, Ebbinghaus' existential treatment 
of memory promises us an exact psychology, 
why should not an existential treatment of per- 
ception and thought be both possible and hope- 
ful? Or, in other words: if perception and 
thought are intrinsically something other than 
existent qualities, as money is something intrin- 
sically other than paper and gold and silver, 
then, of course, their objective reference must 
always be considered, whatever the Aufgabe of 
the moment may chance to be. If, however, the 
objective reference is itself due to Aufgabe, then 
a shift of Aufgabe from that of everyday life 
to that of the laboratory should yield results as 
valuable as those obtained in the sphere of sensa- 
tion and the association of ideas. Messer speaks 
of a 'divergence of the lines of psychological 
inquiry,' 50 as if there were a single original path 
which now branches into two, the one taking us 



138 METHODS AND RESULTS 

to sensation and idea, and the other to percep- 
tion and judgment. But the original path, so 
far as I can discover, is simply the path of popu- 
lar psychology, which is straightly continuous 
with the road to perception and judgment; the 
second path, that Ebbinghaus followed, is the 
little travelled and artificial way of existential 
or 'exact' psychology. It would seem wiser, if 
we are to pay regard to objective reference at 
all, — and I need not here discuss that question, — 
to lay double tracks from the very beginning. 

However, I am now criticising Messer's posi- 
tion, whereas I set out to criticise his statement 
of the position. I find the statement confused, 
in this matter of objective reference; and I find 
it still more confused in the matter of act and 
content. I must read you a longish passage. 

"This act of judgment," Messer writes, "this act of 
acceptance and rejection, appears not only in connec- 
tion with objectives of judgment, that is, with thought- 
contents that stand in predicative relation and find their 
linguistic expression in the predicative proposition, but 
is of frequent occurrence in all our experimental series. 
Whether the problem is that of formulating a proposi- 
tion, or merely that of designating an idea or an object 
or what not, again and again we have the experience 
reported that conscious contents, of one kind or another, 
offer themselves as solution of the problem, and that 
they are accepted or rejected; oftentimes the verbal 



MESSER ON JUDGMENT 139 

idea Yes or No is discovered in consciousness. And this 
experience of approval and disapproval, this utterance 
of Yes or No, is termed, by all observers alike, a i judg- 
ment.' We have ourselves limited the term judgment 
to the thought-content of the predicative proposition, 
but we may very well apply the name 'act of judgment' 
to the experience in question. Acts of judgment, in 
this sense, may appear wherever 'problems' are set to 
thought, and wherever the contents supplied by the 
mechanism of association are brought into relation with 
the 'problem,' examined as to their adequacy to its solu- 
tion, and accordingly accepted or rejected. Now in 
these facts, that certain contents acquire the character 
of problems, and further that acts of acceptance and 
rejection occur in the manner described, we have psy- 
chical experiences that are evidently inexplicable from the 
uniformities of simple reproduction and association, and 
that justify our distinguishing the processes of thought 
from those of associative reproduction." 51 

I say nothing of the point that, in this passage, 
the mechanism of association apparently fur- 
nishes contents of a certain sort apart from any- 
problem whatsoever: that difficulty we have al- 
ready mentioned. The particular difficulty here 
is that an act of judgment may appear in con- 
sciousness without the content of judgment, that 
the Urteilsdkt appears along with a Begriff sin- 
halt. How is such a state of affairs possible, if 
act and content are correlative? I can explain 
Messer's view only if I suppose that, as regards 



140 METHODS AND RESULTS 

both the act of judgment and the specific experi- 
ence of volition or intention, he moves back and 
forth between his two types of Aufgabe, the 
existential and the relational. When he affirms 
that the relational problem brings into being a 
specific conscious quality, and when he affirms 
that the act of judgment, as acceptance or rejec- 
tion, may accompany a single significant term 
as well as a predicative proposition, he seems to 
me to be regarding intention and acceptance, 
after all, as existential contents, on the same 
level with sensations and ideas. If I am right, 
Messer is confused in his thinking. If I am 
wrong, then I must still believe that he is con- 
fused in his writing. 

Let us, however, summarise once more. The 
observer is given a certain problem. The prob- 
lem finds representation in consciousness, verbal 
or other; the observer understands it, has the 
attitude or Bewusstseinslage of meaning; and 
has the good-will to follow instructions. This 
good-will, which may also be termed a prepared- 
ness for the particular mode of reaction, is repre- 
sented in consciousness by a definitely directed 
expectation, by a 'feeling' of clearing obstruc- 
tions out of the way, and so on. 52 The stimulus 
comes, and the judgment runs its course. It is 
characterised formally, by its determination; 



MESSER ON JUDGMENT 141 

materially, by the experience of a predicative 
relation, and also, as a rule, by a volition or in- 
tention, the specific conscious quality of the 
relational problem, the problem of objective 
reference. If this quality is lacking, then the 
predicative relation appears along with an act of 
judgment, the qualitatively specific experience 
of acceptance or rejection. 

That is Messer's analysis ; and it contains, evi- 
dently, much more than we find in Watt. At 
the same time, a good deal of the new matter 
implies the doctrine of conscious transcendence; 
and a psychologist who, like Biihler, banishes 
transcendence from psychology will make short 
work of it. Moreover, the predicative relation 
was, as I pointed out, not the discovery of the 
observers but an explicit feature of Messer's 
instruction to them; and we have seen that they 
insisted, despite the instruction, on following out 
some prior suggestion and giving the name of 
judgment to the experience of acceptance or 
rejection. All this leaves us in uncertainty as 
regards the net value of Messer's contribution 
to our subject. And when we read, later on, 
that "thinking may be counted among the volun- 
tary actions," 53 we may even doubt whether we 
have advanced appreciably beyond our starting 
point. For what we need is not a genus but a 



142 METHODS AND RESULTS 

difference: Watt and Ach gave us the genus. 
And if the predicative relation is the differentia 
required, we want the observers to find it for 
themselves, and not to take it from the experi- 
menter; we want them to tell us what it is like, 
and not to leave its description to future investi- 
gations ; and we want them to stick to it, and not 
to apply the term judgment to something quite 
different. For the rest, there are plenty of 
'judgments' classed by Messer as 'reproduced/ 
'abbreviated,' 'preparatory,' 'borrowed,' that on 
his own definition should not be classified as 
judgments at all. 54 

So Messer passes from the scene. I have dealt 
somewhat severely with his psychology of judg- 
ment. Let me, all the more for that, remind you 
that his two hundred pages will well repay your 
study ; let me say again that he is a mine of intro- 
spective information; and let me repeat my 
opinion that his paper is, in many respects, the 
most valuable of the studies issued from the 
Wiirzburg laboratory. We turn now to Biihler. 

You remember Biihler's method? He means 
to make his observers think; and he makes them 
think by asking them questions that cannot be 
answered, yes or no, without thought. A first 
group of questions, suggested by Ach's observa- 
tions on non-imaginal awareness, 55 takes the 



BUHLER ON THOUGHT 143 

form: Can you, or Do you know: — Can you cal- 
culate the velocity of a freely falling body? The 
observer replies, yes or no, as soon as he has made 
up his mind. In the second and third groups, 
which begin with Do you understand, Is this cor- 
rect, or the like, the experimenter reads off some 
condensed and pithy saying, — an aphorism from 
Nietzsche, or a verse from Heyse or Riickert. A 
fourth group, which aims to induce thoughts of 
a synoptic character, comprises large general 
questions: What is an ideal? What has Herbart 
in common with Hume? And a fifth and final 
group, which is intended to bring out the rela- 
tion between thought and idea, contains such 
questions as: Do you know how many primary 
colours the Sistine Madonna is painted with? In 
every case, the observer gives a full account of 
his experience. 56 

We find in the introspective reports ideas, feel- 
ings, attitudes. But, Biihler says, this is not all. 

"The most important items of experience consist of 
something that is not touched at all by any of the 
categories by which these formations are defined (I ab- 
stract for the time being from the attitudes, whose 
position is peculiar) : something that shows no trace 
of sensible quality or sensible intensity : something of 
which we may rightly predicate degree of clearness, 
degree of assurance, a certain vividness whereby it ap- 
peals to our mental interest, but which in content is 



144 METHODS AND RESULTS 

determined quite differently from anything that in the 
last resort may be reduced to sensations; something 
about which it would be nonsense to enquire whether it 
possessed a higher or lower degree of intensity, and 
still greater nonsense to ask what sensible qualities it 
could be resolved into. These items are what the 
observers have termed, with reference to Ach, aware- 
nesses, or sometimes knowledge, or simply 'the conscious- 
ness that,' but most frequently and most correctly 
thoughts." 57 "The essential constituents of our thought- 
experiences are thoughts and thoughts alone." 58 

We may say at once that Biihler interprets the 
attitude (Bewusstseinslage) in terms of this 
theory as "a consciousness of the process of 
thought, and more especially of the turning- 
points of this process in experience itself/' 59 — 
just as Watt, we may add, interprets it, in terms 
of his problem-psychology, as a problem without 
a name.* 60 

This, then, is the thesis of all Biihler's publi- 
cations, — that " there are thoughts without any 

* Both in Watt and in Biihler, the theory of attitude is merely 
an incident in the theory of thought. "A problem," Watt says, 
"is a state of consciousness that exists only in order to determine 
a certain significant series of reproductions; that can be specified 
only by reference to, and indeed comes to consciousness only as, 
this series: an attitude is the same thing without a special name. 
In the case of the problem, we can specify both the name and the 
meaning of the contents reproduced by it." This account, of course, 
leads to the difficulty which we discussed above, p. 130. Biihler 
speaks of attitudes as "eigentumliche mehr zustandliche Erlebnis- 
strecken," and then defines them in the words of the quotation. 



BUHLER ON THOUGHT 145 

the least demonstrable trace of any sort of imag- 
inal groundwork;" 61 "knowledge (Wissen) is a 
new manifold of modifications of our conscious- 
ness," 62 covering the variety of thoughts as the 
general term sensation covers the variety of 
sensations. He accordingly defines thought as 
a mental element, "the ultimate unit of experi- 
ence in our thought-experiences," as "the least 
item of a thought experience; that in which a 
progressive definitional analysis can discrimi- 
nate no independent items but only dependent 
parts." 63 And he proceeds at once to classifi- 
cation. 

Into this classification I shall not follow him, 
because I believe that his method leads to erro- 
neous results. I can best indicate my line of 
criticism by taking a very simple instance. 
When a student begins work in the psychological 
laboratory, and more particularly when he be- 
gins work by any one of the metric methods of 
psychophysics, he is very likely to fall into what 
we term, technically, the stimulus-error. 64 He 
is instructed to attend to sensation, but in real- 
ity he attends to stimulus. Instead of comparing 
two noise-intensities, he will compare the imag- 
ined heights from which the balls fall that give 
the noise-sensations; and, in general, he will 

concern himself not with greys but with grey 

10 



146 METHODS AND RESULTS 

papers, not with kinesthetic sensations but with 
weights, not with visual magnitude but with the 
size of objects. The error is both insidious and 
persistent ; I could quote you a long list of warn- 
ings to avoid it ; and I could show you that those 
who give the warnings do not always themselves 
escape the error. It is, as Messer said, natural 
and customary to think, not of mental processes, 
but of the things and events about us, — while it 
is, as I believe, absolutely necessary to get rid of 
things, and to think only of the mental processes, 
if we are to have a science of psychology. Well! 
my criticism is that Biihler's observers fell into 
an error of the same sort as the stimulus-error. 
They were men of wide psychological experi- 
ence, of long technical training, of undisputed 
ability: but they were given an immensely diffi- 
cult task, in terms of a very poor method. How 
difficult was the task, you may realise by calling 
to mind the history of analytical research in the 
more accessible field of sensation; how poor was 
the method, you may realise by calling to mind 
the wealth of experimental appliances which that 
research has found necessary. Indeed, the 
method was not only intrinsically crude but it 
was also suggestive. Let me give an illustra- 
tion, taken at random. 

"Is this true? 'To give every man his own were to 



BUHLER ON THOUGHT 147 

will justice and to achieve chaos.' — Yes. — First of all, 
a peculiar stage of reflection (eigentumliches Stadium 
der Ueberlegung) with fixation of a surface in front of 
me. Echo of the words, with special emphasis on the 
beginning and end of the sentence. Tendency to accept 
the statement. Then all of a sudden Spencer's criti- 
cism of altruism occurred to me, with the thought that 
Spencer mainly emphasises, — the thought that the end 
of altruism is not attained. Then I said Yes. No ideas 
except the word 'Spencer,' which I said over to myself." 65 

Here we have a report of two verbal experi- 
ences, — an echo of the stimulus, which we may 
probably put down to perseverative tendency, 
and a significant fragment of internal speech. 
But we have also the report of a peculiar stage 
of reflection, and of a tendency to agreement. 
I submit that a method which simply notes ex- 
periences of this kind, and leaves them without 
further attempt at analysis, is a suggestive 
method. And I submit that the observer is not 
describing his thought, but reporting what his 
thought is about; not photographing conscious- 
ness, but formulating the reference of conscious- 
ness to things : in a word, that he has fallen, in the 
case of thought, into the error which we should 
term the stimulus-error in the case of sensation. 
Yes! you say, — but the first of these criti- 
cisms may be due to sensationalistic bias, and the 
latter is, after all, a mere record of personal 



148 METHODS AND RESULTS 

impression. To which I reply: Do not try to 
separate the criticisms; take them together. If 
I am right in saying that the observers tell us 
what their consciousness is about, when they 
should be telling us what it is, then evidently the 
method is somehow at fault; and its obviously 
crude and obviously suggestive nature points at 
once, whether we are sensationalists or whether 
we are not, to a comparison with the refined and 
objective methods employed in the study of sen- 
sation and association. What I have to show, 
then, is that my charge of an error akin to the 
stimulus-error is well-founded, based on more 
than individual impression. If I can do this, my 
criticism of the method, however it was origi- 
nally prompted, will follow of itself. 

I read, first of all, a passage from a critical 
essay by von Aster, published last year in 
Ebbinghaus' Zeitschrift. 

"It was my intention to show that Biihler's experi- 
ments do not, in themselves, prove the existence of 
specific thought-experiences; experiences, that is, which 
are unequivocally and adequately definable as a 'knowl- 
edge about' or a 'consciousness of ; experiences in whose 
nature it lies that, in or by them, we experience, appre- 
hend, have before us a content that must be brought to 
expression by words or complete sentences. No more 
is proved, it seems to me, than the fact that the observers 
intimated certain definite experiences by these sentences. 



CRITIQUE OF BUHLER 149 

But since intimation, with whatever assurance it may be 
given, is not of itself a description or a direct identifica- 
tion (Konstatierung), the question now arises, what 
experiences lay at the basis of this intimation." 66 

Here, it is true, nothing is said of a stimulus- 
error. But the distinction between intimation 
and description, between Kundgabe and Be- 
schreibung, is precisely my distinction between 
reporting about consciousness and reporting 
consciousness. Biihler's results, says von Aster, 
must be psychologically interpreted, in the light 
of an existentially directed introspection; and 
they need not be interpreted in Biihler's way. 
He points out, further, that the change from 
Marbe's unanalysable 'attitudes' to Biihler's 
precise and well-defined 'thoughts' itself indi- 
cates a change of procedure on the part of the 
observers : for description, and especially psycho- 
logical description, is always approximate and 
rough, while intimation is assured, self-confi- 
dent, a matter of course. 67 

There, then, is one critic who, in principle, 
agrees with me. But I can call another witness 
on the same side, — and, this time, one of Biihler's 
two preferred observers. Diirr, in a later num- 
ber of Ebbinghaus' Zeitschrift, writes as follows : 

"I have followed the course of Biihler's investigation, 
in which I was privileged to take part as observer, with 



150 METHODS AND RESULTS 

keen interest. And I have been led to a rather curious 
result, which has altogether changed my ideas of the 
best method for the conduct of thought-experiments. 
Over and over again, as I was observing for Btihler, 
I had the impression, though I was not able at the time 
to formulate it very clearly, that my report was simply 
a somewhat modified verbal statement of the thoughts 
aroused in me by the experimenter, and that this verbal 
statement could not properly be regarded as a psycho- 
logical description of the thoughts. What I mean by 
this antithesis of verbal expression and psychological 
description will perhaps become clearer if I suggest that 
the layman in psychology would be giving introspective 
reports every time that he exchanged thoughts with a 
friend, unless there were some distinction between verbal 
•expression and psychological description." 68 

The psychologically trained observer is, of course, 
not so naive as this layman; his report, as Diirr 
says, is a somewhat modified verbal statement 
(eine irgendwie modifizierte sprachliche Dar- 
stellung) of his thoughts; but, in the last resort, 
he too is stating, not describing. And so, Diirr 
continues, 

"I maintain that Buhler, despite the ingenuity and 
care which he has shown in his experiments, has not 
attained to a correct apprehension of the nature of the 
thought-processes. The path that he has travelled will, 
in all probability, never lead us to the desired 
results." 69 — 

I have offered you these quotations from von 



BINET AND WOODWORTH ON THOUGHT 151 

Aster and Durr, instead of giving a summary 
of their criticism in my own words, because I 
wish to convince you that the objection which 
they raise to Buhler's work, though it is some- 
what differently phrased, is in fact identical with 
my charge of an error which is of the same genus 
as the stimulus-error. I say that the observers 
tell us, not what consciousness is, but what it is 
about; von Aster says that they intimate, and 
do not describe; Durr says that they state, ver- 
bally express themselves, but do not describe. 
In view of this agreement, I shall not follow 
Biihler further into his experiments upon 
thought-memory. 

But there are still two investigations, those of 
Binet and Woodworth, which I may seem to 
have unduly neglected. I think, however, that 
what applies to Biihler applies also to them. 
Binet's observers often reported reflexions, 
ideeSj pensees, imageless thoughts which they 
distinguished from images. 70 I pointed out, in 
the last Lecture, that many of these thoughts 
may be regarded as attitudes, Bewusstseinslagen. 
In so far as they seem, further, to imply a speci- 
fic thought-process, Buhler's Gedanke, they are 
open to the objection that we have just raised 
against Buhler's thought-elements, — and in in- 
creased measure. For you will perceive that, if 



152 METHODS AND RESULTS 

trained psychologists are liable to confuse de- 
scription with intimation, children of thirteen 
and fourteen, however patient, however respon- 
sive, however psychologically gifted, will be 
still more liable to slip from fact to meaning, 
from observation to objective reference. It 
would be strange indeed if Marguerite and 
Armande resisted a temptation to which Kiilpe 
and Diirr succumbed! And Woodworth's re- 
sults by the method of questions must be judged 
by the same standard. It may very well be true 
that "the thought of diamonds was there before 
the sound of the word," and that "y° u know 
what you want to say" in conversation before 
the words themselves appear. 71 But what is 
a thought-of? and what is a knowing? The 
method is at fault here, as it was with Biihler; 
experience is indicated, intimated, not described. 
There remain Woodworth's and Storring's 
experiments by the methods of rule-of -three and 
of syllogism. Woodworth finds that the trans- 
fer of the relation from the first pair of terms 
to the case suggested by the third term may take 
place without consciousness, simply as a result 
of the Aufgabe; or that the transferred relation 
may have a name or an image as its vehicle; or 
again that it may be in consciousness, as 'image- 
less thought/ without any vehicle. To meet this 



STORRING ON INFERENCE 153 

last case, he postulates 'feelings of relation/ of 
the same psychological order as "feelings of 
sensory qualities. Each feeling of relation is a 
simple quality." 72 The assumption seems un- 
necessary, — at any rate until we have finally 
decided that the 'feelings of relation' do not con- 
stitute transitional forms of a Bewusstseinslage, 
of the kind to which Messer has called atten- 
tion; 73 the series 'image or word, imageless 
thought, no consciousness' is characteristic of 
these 'attitudes.' Storring's work, again, touches 
that of the Wiirzburg school at various points, — 
as regards the influence of the Aufgabe, or as 
Storring calls it, the Anweisung, the instruction; 
as regards the mechanics of introspection, and 
so on, — but, dealing as it does with inference, 
and not with concept or judgment, it moves 
in general upon a higher plane, and takes the 
results of the earlier studies for granted. 
Consciousness of identity, consciousness of assur- 
ance, consciousness of understanding, conscious- 
ness that something is coming, — phrases of this 
sort meet us at the threshold. 74 But these are 
the very things whose psychology we have been 
discussing. — 

I said, in the last Lecture, that in 1905 the 
outlook for an experimental psychology of 
thought was distinctly promising; but that 



154 METHODS AND RESULTS 

Messer then essayed a task which was too great 
for him, and that Biihler gave a turn to the 
inquiry which has served rather to retard than 
to advance the progress of our knowledge. We 
have now reviewed the various experimental 
studies, under the heads of the conscious attitude 
and the thought-element, and you agree, I hope, 
that my criticism was sound. I cannot subscribe, 
as Diirr and Biihler himself cannot subscribe, to 
all that Wundt urges against the Ausfrage- 
meihode; but I believe, with Diirr and von Aster, 
that in Biihler's hands the method, so far as its 
immediate purpose is concerned, has proved a 
failure. I have now to undertake, in a conclud- 
ing Lecture, two tasks of very different degrees 
of difficulty: a general appraisement of the work 
so far done, and a defense of a sensationalistic 
psychology of thought. 



LECTURE V 

THE EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 
OF THOUGHT 



LECTURE V 

THE EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY OP 
THOUGHT 



THERE is a type of review, known to 
everyone who has written a book, which 
begins with a compliment, disapproves steadily 
of the contents of the successive chapters, and 
ends by saying that the author has made a valu- 
able contribution to his subject. Now I believe 
very thoroughly in criticism ; and I think that the 
rather haphazard and planless sort of criticism 
that we are apt to get in experimental psychol- 
ogy, criticism that is either perfunctory and 
therefore unhelpful, or else due to a personal 
interest in the writer and therefore biased, — I 
think that the relatively large proportion of this 
sort of criticism is a plain indication of the im- 
maturity of our science. But I believe also in 
appreciation, and I think that appreciation 
should be as explicit and as technical as criticism. 
I shall therefore try to state, in definite terms, 
the advantage that, as I see things, has accrued 
to psychology from the series of investigations 
which we have been discussing. 

157 



158 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

I see, then, in the first place, two advantages 
that are closely bound together, as closely as 
problem and solution, or question and answer. 
It is a great thing that consciousnesses like doubt, 
hesitation, trying to remember, feeling sure, 
have been dragged into the daylight, and lie now 
in plain sight, a challenge to the experimental 
method. And it is a great thing that the fact 
of determination, the influence of Aufgabe, has 
been expressly recognised, in strict laboratory 
procedure, as a principle of explanation. Let 
me enlarge, for a moment, upon these two aspects 
of our thought-psychology. 

Whether we look back over the course of ex- 
perimental psychology as exhibited in text-books 
and journals, or whether we search our own 
hearts, there is no escape from the conviction 
that sensationalism has been taken too easily. I 
tried to show, in my first Lecture, how the sen- 
sationalism of experimental psychology differs 
from the traditional sensationalism of the Eng- 
lish school. All that I then said I hold to. But 
I add now that we have not been serious enough 
with our canons and rules of procedure; having 
gone so far, we have retraced our steps and gone 
so far over again, but more carefully; we have 
not pushed out into the unknown. I can illus- 
trate what I mean by reference to a piece of 



THE PROBLEM OP SENSATIONALISM 159 

work published some years ago from the Cornell 
Laboratory, — work which I am not likely to 
underestimate, and whose solid merits have been 
recognised both at home and abroad. Bagley/ 
in his Apperception of the Spoken Sentence, 
takes issue with Stout on the matter of imageless 
thought. "From the series of observations which 
were made in the course of our experiment," he 
says, "no conscious 'stuff' was found which 
could not be classed as sensation or affection, 
when reduced to its ultimates by a rigid analy- 
sis"; and he gives a wealth of introspective de- 
tail. But it is a question, you see, whether his 
observers were not unconsciously set, disposed, 
prejudiced towards sensationalism; it is a ques- 
tion whether, had they been born and bred in 
Stout's briar-patch, they would not have discov- 
ered an 'imageless apprehension.' 1 At any rate, 
what we have now to do is to grapple with the 
alleged imageless experiences, one by one; to 
look them squarely in the face, from our sensa- 
tionalists standpoint; and either to carry our 
analysis triumphantly through, or to make open 
confession of failure. 

I have sometimes fancied — though the effort 
to be impartial may easily carry one too far — 
that the lack of sensationalistic enterprise, of 
which Marbe and the rest have convicted us, 



160 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

may have been due, in part, to a feeling that we 
could all shelter ourselves, in time of need, be- 
hind Wundt's apperception. The Wundtian 
doctrine is a psychological achievement of the 
first rank, although we stand, perhaps, too near 
for a just appraisement of its real magnitude. 
Not everybody has taken the trouble to under- 
stand it, — and, like all large thought construc- 
tions, it requires understanding. But everybody 
has known that it was there, a living witness to 
the inadequacy of associationism ; and as Wundt 
operates only with sensations and affections, we 
have had the comfortable assurance that we 
might safely do the same thing. However that 
may be, and I offer it as the merest suggestion, 
there can be no doubt that the imageless psychol- 
ogists have done us the same kind of service in 
the sphere of thought that the James-Lange 
theory did us in the sphere of emotion. We had 
become too civilised, too professional, too aca- 
demic, in our accounts of emotion; and James, 
with his reverberation of organic sensations, 
brought us back to the crude and the raw and the 
rank of actual experience. James' lion has now 
been pretty thoroughly assimilated by the aca- 
demic lamb, who is the better and stronger for 
the meal. Whether the sensationalists can, in 
like manner, assimilate attitudes and awarenesses 



THE DOCTRINE OF AUFGABE 161 

and thought-elements remains to be seen. They 
have at least been stirred up to a healthful activ- 
ity; and if the outcome of the struggle is a dual 
control, their position will certainly not be 
weaker than it now is, but rather made more 
secure within a fixed boundary. 

There, then, is the problem which the recent 
psychology of thought sets to psychology at 
large, — and of which it at once offers a partial 
solution in the doctrine of the problem, the Auf- 
gabe, itself. The notion of an external and 
precedent determination of consciousness is, of 
course, familiar enough; we speak of command, 
of suggestion, of instruction, of the influence of 
surroundings, of class-room atmosphere and 
laboratory atmosphere, of professional attitude, 
of class bias, of habit and disposition, of temper- 
amental interests and predilections, of inherited 
ability and inherited defect ; and in all these cases 
we imply that the trend of a present conscious- 
ness, the direction that it takes, is determined 
beforehand and from without, whether in psy- 
chophysical or in purely physiological terms. But 
a thing may be a commonplace of the text-books, 
and yet have escaped experimental study. Thus 
laboratory psychology has, until very lately, 
looked askance at hypnosis as a method of 

psychological investigation ; the treatment of sug- 
11 



162 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

gestion has therefore, to a large degree, been left 
to the psychopathologists and the psychologists 
of society, and we have borrowed from them as 
occasion arose. Things are changing; Ach and 
Martin have employed hypnosis in the labora- 
tory. Things will change still more, now that 
experimental results in general are seen to be 
functions of the instructions given. 

I do not know where the first hint of this de- 
termination of consciousness is to be found. 
Miiller and Schumann are on the track of it in 
1889, when in reporting their experiments with 
lifted weights they describe the phenomenon of 
motor Einstellung, motor predisposition. 2 Kiilpe 
in 1898 works it out explicitly for the case of 
voluntary action; "the preceding state of con- 
sciousness," he declares, "is of first importance 
in all reaction-time experimentation," and he dis- 
tinguishes the sensorial from the muscular type 
of simple reaction, and the simple sensorial from 
the cognitive reaction, on the ground of diff er- 
ence in the preparation of the reactor; indeed, 
his whole polemic against the subtractive proce- 
dure, the measuring of time of cognition, time of 
discrimination, time of choice by the successive 
subtraction of the times of simpler reactions, is 
based upon the argument that reaction-psychol- 
ogy must be essentially a psychology, not of 



THE DOCTRINE OF AUFGABE 163 

contents, but of preparation. 3 To some extent, 
this same idea was present to Martius in 1891, 4 
to Miinsterberg in 1889, 5 to Lange in 1887. 6 On 
the non-experimental side we may go back to 
Hobbes, who in the Leviathan distinguishes 
mental discourse that is unguided, without de- 
sign and inconstant, from mental discourse that 
is regulated by some desire or design; 7 or we 
may start with Volkelt, who in 1887 emphasised 
the importance of the Vorsatz, the plan or de- 
sign, for the results of observation. 8 On the 
whole, it is probably true to say that this notion 
of the external and precedent determination of 
consciousness comes into experimental psychol- 
ogy, by hints and partial recognitions, in the 
late eighties of the last century. 

However, I am not disputing the originality 
or the service of Watt and Ach. It is they who, 
by systematic experimentation, have given us the 
Aa f gab e and the determinierende Tendenzen, 
and the gift has made it impossible for any fu- 
ture psychologist, to write a psychology of 
thought in the language of content alone. I 
believe, indeed, that the principle of determina- 
tion, taken together with what I may call a 
genetic sensationalism, furnishes a trustworthy 
guide for further experimental study of the 
thought-processes; and I think that the work 



164 PSYCHOLOGY OP THOUGHT 

immediately before us is, under this guidance, 
to bring the processes, little bit by bit, under 
rigorous experimental control. 

We are further indebted to the subjects of 
our inquiry for a great volume of introspective 
data, a mass of introspective material that for 
bulk and value is, I suppose, without a parallel. 
Grant that the reports need, in many cases and 
in various ways, a psychological reinterpretation : 
they stimulate to that interpretation. Grant 
that they set more problems than they solve : they 
set those problems in clear and positive form. 
Raise whatever objection you will: the fact re- 
mains that a large proportion of this analysis is 
solid and stable, and that none of it need be mis- 
leading. If it had merely retaught the old lesson 
that the stronghold of mind is not to be taken by 
storm, but must be reduced by patient siege, we 
might still have been grateful; we cannot too 
often be reminded that the method of psychology 
is an experimental introspection, — that observa- 
tions must be repeated, that the process observed 
must be set apart, in isolation from other pro- 
cesses, that variation of experience must follow 
and tally with variation of conditions, if we are 
to build the science on a firm foundation. 9 The 
printed records show us this; they justify to the 
utmost that painstaking regard for method that 



INTROSPECTIVE DATA 165 

has now and again been made our reproach: but 
the proof and the justification are positive as 
well as negative, given with success as well as 
with failure. One feels— I have felt — a certain 
aversion to the scores of closely packed and 
spottily printed pages of the Archiv; and the 
writers, surely, have a good deal to learn on the 
score of literary presentation; there is no reason 
why they should be quite as full, quite as chatty, 
confidential, platitudinous, formless, as they 
actually are. But after a first reading, when 
one has the clue to the labyrinth, the real and 
permanent value of the 'protocols' is plain 
enough, 

A specific problem set : a principle of explana- 
tion discovered: a volume of untrimmed intro- 
spections offered in evidence: — those, I should 
say, are the three things that we may be grateful 
for. Those are, at any rate, the three most 
tangible things. There is much more to be 
learned: useful hints are given for the conduct 
of experiment, individual differences are in- 
structively displayed, sources of suggestion may 
be traced and their influence noted, mistakes are 
made and their consequences may be followed 
up, and so on and so forth. But help of this sort 
is, after all, the help that we derive from any 
serious and extended piece of work, while the 



V 



166 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

three points that I have just mentioned are 
characteristic and new. 

II 

And now I am to attempt construction, and 
to set forth my own ideas on the psychology of 
thought ! I am not happy in the prospect. But 
I am committed to certain principles, and I 
must do what I can — though there is time only 
for fragments and outline sketches — in their de- 
fense. And first I offer a word upon the regu- 
lative maxims that should, as I believe, direct our 
inquiry. 

I assume that we are to attempt a psychology, 
and that psychology has here to pick its way 
between logic or theory of knowledge, on the 
one hand, and common sense on the other. When 
we are instructing our students in the psychol- 
ogy of sensation and of the simpler sense-com- 
plexes, we have to steer this same sort of middle 
course, only that there the course lies between 
physics (under which I include physiology) and 
common sense. The psychological process is so 
unlike both the nerve-process and the thing of 
common-sense thinking that our task, in the case 
of sensation, should be relatively easy. You 
know that it is not ; you know that while students 
will profess that they clearly see the differences 



PSYCHOLOGY AND LOGIC 167 

as described, it is exceedingly difficult to get 
them to take up the psychological attitude for 
themselves, to psychologise ; the solid, palpable 
facts of natural science and the prejudices of 
common sense are for ever in the way. Well! 
this difficulty is increased tenfold in the case of 
thought. For the psychology of thought leads 
straight up to, passes directly over into, a func- 
tional logic, a theory of knowledge ; you may love 
the one and hate the other, but you cannot be 
sure that you are always on your own side of 
the line ; you are interested to work out an appli- 
cation, or you give the rein to your reproductive 
tendencies, and behold! you have overstepped 
your limit. Common sense tempts you: for 
common sense, however illogical itself, is very 
fond of logic, and oftentimes joins forces with 
logic to wean you from your psychological 
allegiance. I speak abstractly; but it is only 
a step to the concrete. Nothing is more strik- 
ing, nothing in its way is more amusing, than 
the constant recurrence of the charge of logical 
bias in others, and the honest ignorance of logical 
bias in oneself, that characterises the authors we 
have been reviewing. Woodworth 'smarts un- 
der the epistemological whip' of sensationalism, 
and will go to the observed facts; he therefore 
proceeds to write several pages of epistemology. 



168 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

Biihler regrets that Messer should have been 
dominated by Erdmann's logic, and will himself 
go to the observed facts; he prepares for the 
expedition by putting on a fairly complete suit 
of logical armour. It seems to me that the 
charge, as made in the particular instances, is for 
the most part justified, and that the mutual — 
shall I say, recrimination? has its allotted place 
in thought-psychology; the more we are criti- 
cised, the more careful shall we be. Only, it 
would be foolish to suppose that we are ourselves, 
ex officio, free from an error that we discern in 
everyone else. Let us remember that the chances 
of error are legion, and not be surprised if we 
succumb. But let us cling to the ideal of writ- 
ing a psychology; let that Aufgabe be perpetu- 
ally present in consciousness; let us adopt it as 
a regulative principle of our procedure. 

I assume, secondly, that wherever we have to 
deal with a closed consciousness, simultaneous or 
sequential, — I can think of no better adjective 
than 'closed' ; I mean such things as a perception, 
an action, a thought, — the analytical considera- 
tion of mind must be supplemented by the 
genetic, and that this genetic consideration must 
be twofold, individual and racial. I have been 
so generally misunderstood and so seriously 
(though I have no doubt unintentionally) mis- 



THE TASK OF ANALYSIS 169 

represented in this connection that you will, per- 
haps, pardon a somewhat elementary discussion 
of the postulate: I desire to be quite explicit. 

The immediate task of analysis, in face of any 
complex mental process, I take to be itself two- 
fold. We have to regard the process both in 
transverse and in longitudinal section; to deter- 
mine the nature and number of the elementary 
processes into which the complex may be re- 
solved, and to determine, again with reference 
to these elementary processes, the type and dura- 
tion of its temporal course. When, however, we 
are dealing with what I have called the closed 
consciousnesses, a single application of this 
analytical procedure is not enough; on the con- 
trary, we must analyse again and again, at the 
various formative levels of consciousness; we 
must follow out the operation of that general 
law of growth and decay to which I referred in 
the first Lecture.* An obvious illustration of 
this necessity is furnished by the psychology of 
action. To understand the action consciousness 
we must trace the rise and fall of the impulse 
within the individual mind : its rise to volition and 
selective action, its fall to the ideomotor and 
secondary reflex forms. But we must go even 
still further afield; we must transcend the limit 

*P. 33. 



170 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

of the individual mind; we must raise the ulti- 
mate question whether the earliest organic move- 
ments were conscious or unconscious. There is 
no other way, as things are, to approximate ex- 
planation in this department of psychology, — 
and we have said that psychology is to be both 
descriptive and explanatory. We find, in fact, 
that analytical psychology always takes this 
way: I instance only such well-known things 
as Wundt's theory of space-perception and 
Stumpf 's theory of tonal fusion. 11 

There are, then, in these cases, two analytical 
and two genetic problems: the examination of 
present process in transverse and in longitudinal 
section, and the examination of formative levels 
in the history of the individual and of the race. 
Now arises the question with which we are here 
directly concerned: What shall be adopted, in 
these various examinations, as the criterion of a 
mental element? 

I regard as a mental element any process that 
proves to be irreducible, unanalysable, through- 
out the whole course of individual experience. 
Consider, for instance, the processes of sensa- 
tion and affection. They have certain salient 
characteristics in common; they suggest the bio- 
logical analogy of two species of the same genus ; 
I have felt justified in deriving them from a 



THE MENTAL ELEMENT 171 

single hypothetical mental ancestor. 12 Never- 
theless, I can trace no passage from the one to 
the other in the individual mind ; they seem to be 
separate and distinct, so soon as nervous organi- 
sation is complete; and they must, therefore, I 
believe, be regarded by analytical psychology 
as separate elements. Consider, on the other 
hand, the attitudes and awarenesses of which we 
have said so much. If we can trace an attitude 
back, within the same mind, to an imaginal 
source; if it thus appears not as original endow- 
ment but as residuum, not as primule but . as 
vestige, then I should protest against its ranking 
as a mental element. Even if there are certain 
minds in which the derivation is impossible, in 
which the attitude can neither be identified with 
sensation and image nor referred with certainty 
to precedent sensory and imaginal experience, 
I should still hesitate — so long as there are other 
minds in which the derivation is possible — to adopt 
the purely phenomenological standpoint, and to 
class it outright as elementary; I should prefer 
to term it a secondary element, or a derived ele- 
ment, and so to distinguish it from the elements 
proper, as defined a moment ago. Classification 
is, of course, always a matter of expediency, and 
I have no quarrel with those who differ from me 
on this particular point. But it seems to me 



172 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

inexpedient to give the rank of element to any- 
thing that is not a matter of original and general 
human endowment. 

You see, then, the place that I allow to genetic 
consideration. The misunderstanding to which 
I have referred arises, I imagine, from a confu- 
sion of two points of view, which may be dis- 
tinguished as the analytical and the integrative. 
The analytical psychologist, even when he is 
occupied with mind in its development, is always 
trying to analyse. He may, and he does, protest 
that it never occurs to him to consider sensation, 
for instance, — the sensation of the adult human 
consciousness, — as a genetic unit. Nevertheless, 
what he finds by his genetic consideration must, 
of necessity, be sensation over again, in some less 
differentiated form; his problem is analysis, and 
his results are conditioned by the problem. The 
integrative psychologist, eager to preserve that 
continuity of mind which the analyst purposely 
destroys, and working from below upwards in- 
stead of from above downwards, reaches results 
that, in strictness, are incomparable with the 
results of analysis: as incomparable, let us 
say as 'seasonal dimorphism' and 'unstriped 
muscle.' Incomparables, of course, are not in- 
compatibles; but the attempt to compare them, 
to bring them under a common rubric as 'facts 



CONTROL OF CONSCIOUSNESS 173 

of psychological observation' or what not, must 
inevitably lead to misunderstanding. 13 

I have only to add the caution that we must 
not expect a genetic inquiry to reveal, in every 
case, a complete series of nicely graded transi- 
tional forms. If I may trust some observations 
of my own, the path that leads, for example, 
from full imagery to Bewusstseinslage is more 
likely to be broken than continuous; conscious- 
ness seems to drop, at a single step, from a 
higher to a lower level; the progress is effected 
by substitutions and short cuts, rather than by a 
gradual course of transformation. This, how- 
ever, is a matter of descriptive detail, and does 
not affect the principle which is laid down in the 
maxim. 

I assume, thirdly, that consciousness may be 
guided and controlled by extra-conscious, physio- 
logical factors, — by cortical sets and dispositions ; 
and I agree with Ach that this extra-conscious 
determination may lead to novel conscious con- 
nections, which would not have been effected 
by the mere play of reproductive tendencies, 14 
though I do not agree with Messer that the dis- 
position as such is represented in consciousness 
by a specific experience. 15 In a paper which is 
intended to form the basis for a theory of 
thought, a paper entitled "On the Nature of 



174 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

Certain Brain States connected with the Psychi- 
cal Processes/ 5 von Kries, in 1895, worked out 
a theory of cerebrate Einstellung, cerebral set 
or adjustment, with the main features of which 
I am in entire accord. He distinguishes two 
types of adjustment, the connective and the dis- 
positional: the former illustrated, in simple 
terms, by the reading of a musical score in a 
particular key, the latter by our understanding 
of abstract words like 'red/ 'triangle/ 16 It is 
needless to point out that a theory of this sort 
serves admirably to explain the experimental 
results of Watt and Ach; indeed, Ach's deter- 
mining tendencies and subexcited reproductive 
tendencies are merely specialised types of von 
Kries' connective and dispositional adjust- 
ments. 17 And the idea of determination is now 
so familiar to us that I need not further discuss 
it here, or devote further time to my third and 
last regulative maxim. I pass on to the prob- 
lems themselves; and I take up first of all the 
problem of meaning. 

Ill 

Some time ago we met with the objection that 
it is nonsense to call a psychical fact or occur- 
rence the meaning of another psychical fact or 
occurrence; two ideas are and must remain two 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MEANING 175 

ideas, and cannot be an idea and its meaning. I 
said, in reply, that in my belief two ideas do, un- 
der certain circumstances, make a meaning. 
What are the circumstances? 

I hold that, from the psychological or existen- 
tial point of view, meaning — so far as it finds 
representation in consciousness at all — is always 
context. An idea means another idea, is psycho- 
logically the meaning of that other idea, if it is 
that idea's context. And I understand by con- 
text simply the mental process or complex of 
mental processes which accrues to the original 
idea through the situation* in which the organ- 
ism finds itself, — primitively, the natural situa- 
tion; later, either the natural or the mental. In 
another connection, I have argued that the 
earliest form of attention is a definitely deter- 
mined reaction, sensory and motor both, upon 
some dominant stimulus; and that as mind de- 
veloped, and image presently supervened upon 
sensation, this gross total response was differ- 
entiated into three typical attitudes, — the re- 

*The term 'situation' seems to me to bring out more clearly than 
any nearer equivalent of Aufgabe the part played in determination 
by the organism itself. Externally regarded, a situation is a colloca- 
tion of stimuli; but it becomes a situation only if the organism is 
prepared for selective reaction upon that collocation. An Aufgabe, 
on the other hand, a task or problem, may be set to any organism, 
prepared or unprepared. I have no wish to press the word : but I 
here mean by 'situation' any form of Aufgabe that is normal to the 
particular organism. 



176 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

ceptive, the elaborative and the executive, which 
we may illustrate by sensible discrimination, re- 
flective thought, and voluntary action. Now it 
V seems to me that meaning, context, has extended 
and developed in the same way. Meaning is, 
originally, kinaesthesis ; the organism faces the 
situation by some bodily attitude, and the char- 
acteristic sensations which the attitude involves 
give meaning to the process that stands at the 
conscious focus, are psychologically the meaning 
of that process. 18 Afterwards, when differen- 
tiation has taken place, context may be mainly 
a matter of sensations of the special senses, or 
of images, or of kinesthetic and other organic 
sensations, as the situation demands. 19 The par- 
ticular form that meaning assumes is then a 
question to be answered by descriptive psy- 
chology. 

Of all the possible forms, however, — and I 
think they are legion, — two appear to be of 
especial importance: kinsesthesis and verbal 
images. We are animals, locomotor organisms; 
the motor attitude, the executive type of atten- 
tion, is therefore of constant occurrence in our 
experience; and, as it is much older than the 
elaborative, so it is the more ingrained. There 
would be nothing surprising in the discovery 
that, for minds of a certain constitution, all non- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MEANING 177 

verbal conscious meaning is carried by kines- 
thetic sensation or kinesthetic image. And 
words themselves, let us remember, were at first 
motor attitudes, gestures, kinesthetic contexts: 
complicated, of course, by sound, and therefore, 
fitted to assist the other types of attention, the 
receptive and the elaborative ; but still essentially 
akin to the gross attitudes of primitive attention. 
The fact that words are thus originally contex- 
tual, and the fact that they nevertheless as 
sound, and later as sight, possess and acquire a 
content-character, these facts render language 
preeminently available for thought; it is at once 
idea and context of idea, idea and meaning ; and 
as the store of free images increases, and the elab- 
orative attitude grows more and more natural, the 
context-use of words or word-aspects becomes 
habitual. The meaning of the printed page may 
now consist in the auditory -kinesthetic accom- 
paniment of internal speech; the word is the 
word's own meaning; 20 or some verbal represen- 
tation, visual or auditory-kinesthetic or visual- 
kinesthetic or what not, may give meaning to a 
non-verbal complex of sensations or images. 
There would, again, be nothing surprising — we 
should simply be in presence of a limiting case — 

in the discovery that, for minds of a certain con- 
12 



178 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

stitution, all conscious meaning is carried either 
by total kinesthetic attitude or by words. 

As a matter of fact, meaning is carried by all 
sorts of sensational and imaginal processes. Men- 
tal constitution is widely varied, and the mean- 
ing-response of a mind of a certain constitution 
varies widely under varying circumstances. A 
descriptive psychology is primarily concerned 
with types and uniformities ; but if we were to 
make serious work of a differential psychology 
of meaning, we should probably find that, in the 
multitudinous variety of situations and contexts, 
any mental process may possibly be the meaning 
of any other. 

But I go farther. I doubt if meaning need 
necessarily be conscious at all, — if it may not be 
'carried' in purely physiological terms. In rapid 
reading, the skimming of pages in quick succes- 
sion; in the rendering of a musical composition 
in a particular key; in shifting from one lan- 
guage to another as you turn to your right or 
left hand neighbour at a dinner table: in these 
and similar cases I doubt if meaning necessarily 
has any kind of conscious representation. It 
very well may ; but I doubt if it necessarily does. 
There must be an Aufgabe, truly, but then the 
Aufgabe, as we have seen, need not either come 
to consciousness. I was greatly astonished to 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MEANING 179 

observe, some years ago, that the recognition of 
shades of grey might be effected, so far as my 
introspection went, in this purely physiological 
way. I am keenly alive to the importance of 
organic sensations and, as I shall show in a 
moment, to that of reduced or schematic kines- 
thetic attitudes. I was not at all astonished to 
observe that the recognition of a grey might 
consist in a quiver of the stomach. But there 
were instances in which the grey was 'recognised' 
without words; without organic sensations, kin- 
esthetic or other ; without the arousal of a mood ; 
without anything of an appreciably conscious 
sort. I found not the faintest trace of an image- 
less apprehension, if that apprehension is sup- 
posed to be something conscious over and above 
the grey itself. I cannot further describe the 
experience : it was simply a 'recognition' without 
consciousness. 

Nevertheless, you may say, there must have 
been something there; you would have had a 
different experience had the grey not been recog- 
nised. So a word that you understand is experi- 
enced otherwise than a nonsense word or a word 
of some unknown foreign language. Certainly! 
But my contention is that the plus of conscious- 
ness, in these comparisons, lies on the side of the 
unrecognised, the unknown, and not on the side 



180 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

of the recognised and known. There was plenty 
of consciousness, in the experiments to which I 
am referring, when a grey was not recognised: 
the point is that there was sometimes none at all 
when there was recognition. But let me repeat 
that this statement is made tentatively, and sub- 
ject to correction; I believe it to be true of my- 
v self, but it requires confirmation from others. 21 
What, then, of the imageless thoughts, the 
awarenesses, the Bewusstseinslagen of meaning 
and the rest? I have, as you may suppose, been 
keeping my eyes open for their appearance ; and 
we have several investigations now in progress 
that aim, more or less directly, at their examina- 
tion. What I have personally found does not, 
so far, shake my faith in sensationalism. I have 
become keenly alive, for instance, to the variety 
of organic attitude and its kinesthetic represen- 
tation. I am sure that when I sit down to the 
typewriter to think out a lecture, and again to 
work off the daily batch of professional cor- 
respondence, and again to write an intimate and 
characteristic letter to a near friend, — I am sure 
that in these three cases I sit down differently. 
The different Aufgaben come to conscious- 
ness, in part, as different feels of the whole 
body; I am somehow a different organism, and 
a consciously different organism. Description 



ORGANIC ATTITUDES 181 

in the rough is not difficult: there are dif- 
ferent visceral pressures, different distributions 
of tonicity in the muscles of back and legs, dif- 
ferences in the sensed play of facial expression, 
differences in the movements of arms and hands 
in the intervals between striking the keys, rather 
obvious differences in respiration, and marked 
differences of local or general involuntary move- 
ment. It is clear that these differences, or 
many of them, could be recorded by the instru- 
ments which we employ for the method of ex- 
pression, and could thus be made a matter of 
objective record. But I have, at any rate, no 
doubt of their subjective reality; and I believe 
that, under experimental conditions, description 
would be possible in detail. I find, moreover, 
that these attitudinal feels are touched off in 
all sorts of ways: by an author's choice and ar- 
rangement of words, by the intonation of a 
speaking voice, by the nature of my physical 
and social environment at large. 22 They shade 
off gradually into those empathic experiences 
which I mentioned in the first Lecture, the 
experiences in which I not only see gravity and 
modesty and pride and courtesy and stateliness 
in the mind's eye, but also feel or act them in 
the mind's muscles. And I should add that 
they may be of all degrees of definiteness, from 



182 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

the relatively coarse and heavy outlines of the 
typewriting illustration, down to the merest 
flicker of imagery which lies, I suppose, on the 
border of an unconscious disposition. 

I do not for a moment profess to have made 
an exhaustive exploration of my own mind, in 
the search for Bewusstseinslagen. But if there 
were any frequent form of experience, different 
in kind from the kinesthetic backgrounds that I 
have just described, I think that I am sufficiently 
versed in introspection, and sufficiently objective 
in purpose, to have come upon its track. I have 
turned round, time and time again, upon con- 
sciousnesses like doubt, hesitation, belief, assent, 
trying to remember, having a thing on my 
tongue's tip, and I have not been able to discover 
the imageless processes. No doubt, the analysis 
has been rough and uncontrolled ; but it has been 
attempted at the suggestion of the imageless 
psychologists, and with the reports of their in- 
trospections echoing in my mind. Biihler's 
thought-elements I frankly disbelieve in. 23 The 
unanalysable and irreducible Bewusstseinslagen 
of other investigators may, I conceive, prove to 
be analysable when they are scrutinised directly 
and under favourable experimental conditions. 
If they still resist analysis, they may perhaps 
be considered as consciousnesses of the same gen- 



CONSCIOUS ATTITUDES 183 

eral sort as my attitudinal feels, but as conscious- 
nesses that are travelling toward the unconscious 
by another road. It is conceivable, in other 
words, that while, in my mind, the attitudes thin 
out, tail off, lose in bulk, so to say, as they 
become mechanised, in minds of a different type 
they retain their original area, their extension, 
and simply become uniform and featureless, as 
a variegated visual surface becomes uniform 
under adaptation. If that hypothesis is worth 
consideration, then the first problem for experi- 
ment is, as I have earlier suggested, to trace this 
course of degeneration within the same mind. 
Whether the featureless fringes or back- 
grounds shall be classified as a secondary kind 
of mental element — in any event, as we have 
seen, a question of expediency — would then de- 
pend upon the success or failure of the search 
for intermediaries that should link them to 
imagery. 24 

As for Ach's theory of the subexcitation of a 
field of reproductive tendencies, I confess that 
I have been in many minds about it. The ob- 
jection that a mere glow or halo in consciousness 
could not be the vehicle of anything so clear and 
definite as a specific knowledge, I discount alto- 
gether; there is no necessary relation, in my 
experience, between indefiniteness of conscious 



184 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

contents and haziness of meaning. The doubt 
that I have is, first of all, whether the theory is 
necessary, whether the awarenesses (which, re- 
member, I do not myself experience as aware- 
nesses) may not be traced down from imaginal 
complexes; and secondly, whether it is psycho- 
physically possible that excitations which are 
individually subliminal shall by their combination 
produce an effect in consciousness. The case is 
not at all parallel to that of Fechner's caterpil- 
lars, heard feeding in the wood: 25 for there you 
have a simple summation of homogeneous excita- 
tions, whereas here you have the faint stirring 
up of all sorts of reproductions, the getting 
ready of all manner of associated ideas. I can- 
not quite reconcile myself to the theory, — though 
if I were convinced of the ultimate character of 
the awareness, I might find it more plausible 
N than I do. 26 

And what of the feelings of relation? Do I 
not grant that they exist? Most assuredly; I 
intimated as much in a previous Lecture. It 
would be curious indeed if we could talk so 
fluently about relations, and yet had no feeling 
of them, no conscious representation of relation. 
But the phrase 'feeling of relation' is no more 
unequivocal, as a psychological term, than the 
phrase 'idea of object' or 'consciousness of mean- 



FEELINGS OF RELATION 185 

ing. It carries an intimation, an indication, a 
statement-about ; it does not describe. And the 
question for psychology is precisely that : What 
do we experience when we have a 'feeling of 
relation' ? V 

What I myself experience depends upon cir- 
cumstances. It was my pleasure and duty, a 
little while ago, to sit on the platform behind a 
somewhat emphatic lecturer, who made great use 
of the monosyllable 'but.' My 'feeling of but' 
has contained, ever since, a flashing picture of 
a bald crown, with a fringe of hair below, and a 
massive black shoulder, the whole passing swiftly 
down the visual field from northwest to south- 
east. I pick up such pictures very easily, in all 
departments of mind; and, as I have told you, 
they may come to stand alone in consciousness 
as vehicles of meaning. In this particular in- 
stance, the picture is combined with an empathic 
attitude; and all such 'feelings' — feelings of if, 
and why, and nevertheless, and therefore — nor- 
mally take the form, in my experience, of motor 
empathy. I act the feeling out, though as a 
rule in imaginal and not in sensational terms. It ^ 
may be fleeting, or it may be relatively stable; 
whatever it is, I have not the slightest doubt of 
its kinesthetic character. Sometimes it has a 
strong affective colouring — this statement holds 



186 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

of all my attitudinal feels — and sometimes it 
is wholly indifferent. 

The kinesthetic origin of these 'feelings' has 
recently been urged by Washburn, who however 
considers them to be, in the human consciousness, 
"ultimately and absolutely unanalysable and un- 
localisable." 

"The significance of these ['relational elements']," 
we read, " . . .is the following. They are remnants 
of remotely ancestral motor attitudes, and they resist 
analysis now because of their vestigial nature. Take 
the 'feeling of but, 5 for example: the sense of the con- 
tradiction between two ideas, present when we say 'I 
should like to do so and so, but — here is an objection.' 
If we trace this back, what can it have been originally 
but the experience of primitive organisms called upon 
by simultaneous stimuli to make two incompatible re- 
actions at once, and what can that experience have been 
but a certain suspended, baffled motor attitude? Sim- 
ilarly with the 'feeling of if . . ." 27 

We all appeal, at times, to the primitive or- 
ganism — who is a useful creature — and I have 
no doubt that, in this particular case, the appeal 
is justified. But, in my own experience, an or- 
ganism need not be more primitive than a pro- 
fessor of psychology in an American university 
to feel the suspended motor attitude. And while 
the analysis and localisation of my particular 
feeling of 'but' has value only for individual 



FEELINGS OF RELATION 187 

psychology, I do roughly localise it and I can 
roughly analyse it into constituents. 

It follows from what has been said that I fully 
agree with Woodworth as regards the unit-char- 
acter, the psychological completeness and inde- 
pendence, of the 'feeling of relation'; Calkins' 
characteristic of 'belonging to' something else 
appears to me to derive from reflection, not from 
introspection. 28 Where I differ is in my sensa- 
tionalistic reading of the relational consciousness. 
It is, however, always possible, as I explained a 
little while ago in the case of meaning, that we 
are in presence of individual differences, and 
that the champions of the element of relation 
have moved farther than I along the path to 
automatism or mechanisation. It would then 
again be a question of expediency whether we 
set this unanalysable degenerate in a class by 
itself, or whether we give it a place among the 
ideational contents of consciousness. In either 
event we shall have to qualify our choice, to state 
that another mode of classification is possible. 

That the path of habit does, in fact, lead here 
to mechanisation, I am as sure as, without strict 
experimental proof, I can be. Over and over 
again I have noticed how consciousness may be 
switched into a new direction by a relational 
word, without any traceable representation of 



s 



188 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

the relation within consciousness. The function 
of the word is like that of the mysterious button 
at the side of the barrel-organ, which when 
pressed by the grinder changes the resulting 
tune. I must declare, at the risk of wearying 
you with declarations, that I can bear witness 
both to kinsesthesis and to cortical set, but that 
between these extremes I find nothing at all. — 
So much, then, for meaning and attitude and 
relation. Even the little that I have been able 
to say about them shows, I hope, that the sen- 
sationalistic position is still tenable. I wish that 
I could offer some positive contribution to the 
psychology of judgment; but the insuperable 
difficulty there is that we do not yet know what 
judgment is. It is an anomalous position! We 
are committed to a 'psychology of judgment'; we 
can no longer say, with Rehmke, that the phrase 
is a contradiction in itself, 29 or with Marbe that 
there is no psychological criterion of judgment; 
and yet no one, psychologist or logician, can 
furnish a definition that finds general accept- 
ance. 30 And this lack of a settled psycholog- 
ical definition is not a matter simply of different 
points of view, as it is, for instance, in the case 
of sensation and idea. There the differences 
of opinion are natural, traditional, intelligible 
from the history of human thought; here there 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JUDGMENT 189 

is actual uncertainty regarding the nature and 
limits of the process to be defined. 

When, years ago, I was writing a text-book 
of psychology, and felt the need of a paragraph 
upon judgment, I adopted Wundt's description 
of the play of active attention upon an aggregate 
idea; and in order to give judgment a definite 
place in the system, I named it an association 
after disjunction, and classified it with the suc- 
cessive associations. I took Wundt's description 
because it was couched in terms of content, and 
because I could verify it in my own experience. 
Biihler and his observers have recently borne 
witness to its truth; 31 and, indeed, I suppose that 
no one denies the occurrence of the particular 
type of consciousness to which Wundt refers. 
For the same reason, when a reviewer observed 
that I had given an account only of the analytic, 
and not of the synthetic judgment, I replied in 
good introspective faith that my account was 
intended to cover both forms. 32 It is clear, how- 
ever, that the discovery of the Aufgabe makes all 
content-psychology of the Wundtian sort, how- 
ever accurate within its limits, appear partial and 
incomplete. 

When, again, I was looking about for in- 
stances of the judgment, I took it for granted 
that such statements as 'Socrates is a man,' 'Hon- 



190 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

esty is the best policy' are not judgments at all, 
in any distinctive sense, — that they are, on the 
contrary, just as mechanical as is the pianist's 
rendering of a certain composition in a certain 
key, Marbe's investigation of judgment seems 
to me to be open to the criticism that, in a great 
many of his experiments, no judgment is in- 
volved. When, for instance, he asks Kiilpe, 
pointing at the same time to an object on the 
table, "What is that?" and Kiilpe answers "An 
ink bottle," there is a touch of comedy in the 
zugehorige Aussage that the answer came 'quite 
reflexly.' How else should it have come? Well! 
now hear Watt on the other side: 

"There is no reason to suppose," he tells us, "that a 
certain typical course of consciousness is the indis- 
pensable condition of logical thinking. We have to fix 
our attention upon the result (Leistung) and upon 
that alone; we need not assume that a certain rapidity 
of reproduction and mode of apperception are essential 
conditions of a logical act. I find no logical difference 
between the first, slow, hesitating reproduction of an 
idea and the quickest, such as we have in the pair rat- 
bat. It has, however, become the rule with many psy- 
chologists to speak of a thinking that has grown 
mechanical by practice, in opposition to a thinking that 
is active, novel and valuable. This is a vulgar differ- 
ence, which has little import for psychological analysis 
and for experiment." 33 

I can only say that, so far as I see, the differ- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JUDGMENT 191 

ence — be it as vulgar as possible — has a great 
deal of import for analysis and experimentation. 
Watt, I may remind you, is convinced that all 
his experiments were judgments, because all 
alike stood under the influence of the Aufgabe. 
But, if we find that consciousness under that 
influence shows all manner of variation, it is our 
business, as psychologists, to make the variation 
explicit; to bring the different forms, by ex- 
perimental control, to a psychological analysis. 
At the same time the fact that Watt adopts so 
general a criterion of judgment shows the un- 
certainty of its psychological definition; just as 
the adoption of a similarly general criterion of 
voluntary action, by Thorndike and Woodworth, 
shows how far we are, in that field also, from 
clear-cut distinctions. 34 Any proposed definition 
must have something personal and arbitrary 
about it. 

Yet Biihler started out with the simple in- 
tention of making his observers think, and I 
have been saying that his method was a failure! 
Yes, — not because the intention was wrong, but 
because the method at once escaped experimental 
control and put a premium on the stimulus-error. 
I venture to propose a middle way. I have 
pointed out that we are all exposed to infection 
from logic, though we recognise the symptoms 



192 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

of the disease in others more readily than we 
observe them in ourselves, Now let us face the 
facts; and, if we can, let us agree with Royce 
that "every advance upon one of these two sides 
of the study of the intellectual life makes possi- 
ble, under the conditions to which all our human 
progress is naturally subject, a new advance 
upon the other side." 35 Then a programme for 
the experimental study of judgment lies before 
us. We have to work steadily and one by one 
at the part-problems set by the investigations 
already made, and we have to compare our results 
with the teachings of the standard books on logic. 
The logicians disagree, as the psychologists dis- 
agree. But we shall find out, by our comparison 
and by the suggestion of further work that issues 
from it, what types of consciousness there are 
that correspond with current logical definitions 
of judgment. As the exploration goes on, uni- 
formities will appear of themselves; and ulti- 
mately we shall be able to decide whether 
judgment is a general term for a great variety 
of consciousnesses, a name like 'perception/ or 
whether it is, like 'fusion,' the name of a specific 
mode of conscious arrangement. To make the 
idea more concrete, I propose, for instance, that 
we combine Wundt's notion of the apperceptively 
analysed aggregate idea with the doctrine of 



CONCLUSION 193 

'Aufgdbe, and discover experimentally how far 
the combination takes us. Or, to illustrate it 
from another point of view, I suggest that Mes- 
ser's mistake lay in his outright acceptance of 
Erdmann's definition of judgment; that he 
should not have instructed his observers to find 
the predicative relation, but should have put 
them under conditions where they might find it 
if it was there. The advantages of this procedure 
are that we secure a definite starting point for 
experimental work, and carry on that work under 
the guidance of some definite hypothesis. The 
obvious disadvantage is the dependence of a psy- 
chological enquiry upon logical presuppositions. 
But we ought to have our eyes open : and, if we 
nod, our friends will not scruple to arouse us. 36 

It is, as everyone knows, far easier to propose 
than to carry the proposal out in experimental 
performance. Once upon a time, I innocently 
gave a trio of students the topics of expectation, 
practice and habituation, with the idea that a year's 
experimental work would reveal everything about 
them that we need to know. The three reports 
are still extant, and I find their perusal whole- 
some. It is easy to suggest: but here there has 
been no alternative, — or at best the alternative 
of a sheer dogmatism. My task has been to per- 
suade you that there is no need, as things are, to 

13 



194 PSYCHOLOGY OF THOUGHT 

swell the number of the mental elements; that 
the psychology of thought, so far as we have it, 
may be interpreted from the sensationalistic 
standpoint, and so far as we still await it, may 
be approached by sensationalistic methods. What 
the future will bring forth, no one can foresee: 
it may be that the essential problems are already 
before us, or it may be that we are still at the 
threshold of a thought-psychology, that, psycho- 
logically as well as logically, judgment is but 
the first step on a long road of scientific inquiry. 
In any event, I see less prospect of gain from a 
revolution than from persistent work under the 
existing regime. 

We have acknowledged our indebtedness to 
the psychologists of imageless thinking. We 
have admitted and considered the fact of con- 
stitutional bias. On the other hand, we have 
proved that much can be analysed which had been 
pronounced simple and unanalysable, and we 
have found a direction for research that is prov- 
ing itself practicable in the laboratory. The final 
decision between the opposing views may now be 
left, with confidence, to the outcome of future 
experiment. 



: 



NOTES 



NOTES TO LECTURE I 

1 K. Marbe's work on judgment (1901) has proved to 
be the starting-point of a long and important series of 
investigations, and it is becoming customary to date the 
experimental psychology of thought from the appear- 
ance of the Expervmentell-psychologische Untersuch- 
ungen uber das Urteil, eine Eirdeitung in die Logik,* as 
we date the experimental psychology of memory from 
Ebbinghaus' Ueber das Gedachtnis. I have, naturally, 
no wish to detract from Marbe's service and originality. 
But in fact there were experiments on thought before 
1901 ; Binet seems to have known nothing of Marbe 
when he wrote his own book; and Marbe's work — with 
its negative result on the side of psychological analysis, 
and its strongly logical leanings — would hardly have 
had the influence that it has actually exerted unless the 
ground had been prepared to receive it. Hence it 
would, perhaps, be more nearly true to say that Marbe 
stands to the experimental psychology of thought as Leh- 
mann (with his Die Hauptgesetze des menschlichen 
Gefiihlslebens, 1892) stands to the experimental psy- 
chology of the affective processes. 

2 So A. Binet, U etude expervmentale de Vintelligence^ 
1903, 1 f. "II est incontestable, pour ceux qui suivent 
les progres de la psychologie experimentale, que cette 
science subit en ce moment meme une evolution decisive. 
. . . Le mouvement nouveau . . . consiste a faire une 

* Cited, in the following Notes, as 'Marbe.' 
t Cited, in the following Notes, as 'Binet.' 

197 



198 NOTES TO LECTURE I 

plus large place a l'introspection, et a porter l'investi- 
gation vers les phenomenes superieurs de Pesprit, tels 
que la memoire, Pattention, Pimagination, Porientation 
des idees." 

3 Volkerpsychologie. Elite Untersuchung der Ent- 
wicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus und Sitte. I. 
Die Sprache, 1900 ; second edition, 1904. 

4 Principles of Physiological Psychology, i., 1904, 5 ; 
Grundzilge der physiologischen Psychologies i., 1908, 
5. The idea is implied ibid., 1874, 5, but is not 
clearly expressed before i., 1887, 5 f. See also Beitrdge 
zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung, 1862, Einleitung ; 
Essays, 1885, 144 ff. (1906, 207 ff.); Ueber Ziele 
und Wege der Volkerpsychologie, Philosophische Studien, 
iv., 1888, 1 ff. ; Ueber Ausf rageexperimente und iiber die 
Methoden zur Psychologie des Denkens, Psychologische 
Studien, iii., 1907, 340 ff. Ct. N. Ach, Ueber d. 
Willenstatigkeit u. d. Deriken, 1905, 21. 

I have spoken in the text of Wundt's overt challenge 
to the experimentalists. It should be remembered, fur- 
ther, that the Psychology of Language is itself couched 
throughout in terms of a definite systematic psychology, 
and therefore challenges by implication all those who 
are unable to accept the system. 

5 All these and other, similar influences are traceable 
in the German work. The most important references 
are: 

B. Erdmann, Logik, L, 1892, 1907. 

Die psychologischen Grundlagen der Beziehungen zwischen 
Sprechen und Denken, Arch. f. syst. Philos., ii., 1896, 355-416; 
iii., 1897, 31-48, 150-173. 

Umrisse zur Psychologie des Denkens, in Philosophische 
Abhandlungen, Chr. Sigwart zu seinem 70. Oeburtstage 
gewidmet, 1900, 3-40. 



NOTES TO LECTURE I 199 

E. G. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, i. Prolegomena zur 

reinen Logik, 1900. ii. Untersuchungen zur Phanomenologie 

und Theorie der Erkenntnis, 1901. 
T. Lipps, Einheiten und Relationen, eine Skizze zur Psychologie 

der Apperzeption, 1902. 

Vom Fuhlen, Wollen und Denken, 1902. 

Einige psychologische Streitpunkte : iii. Die Relation der 

Aehnlichkeit, Zeits. f. Psychol, xxviii., 1902, 166-178. 

Fortsetzung der "Psychologischen Streitpunkte": v. Zur 

Psychologie der "Annahmen," ibid., xxxi., 1903, 67-78. 

Leitfaden der Psychologie, 1903, 1906. 

Bewusstsein und Gegenstande, Psychologische Untersuchungen, 

i., 1905, 1-203. 

Inhalt und Gegenstand; Psychologie und Logik, Sitzungsber. 

d. philos. -philol. Kl. d. k. b. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Miinchen, 

Jahrgang 1905, 1906, 511-669. 
A. Meinong, Zur Psychologie der Komplexionen und Relationen, 

Zeits. f. Psychol, u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorgane, ii., 1891, 245- 

265. 

Beitrage zur Theorie der psychischen Analyse, ibid., vi., 1893-4, 

340-385, 417-455. 

Ueber Gegenstande hoherer Ordnung und deren Verhaltniss 

zur inneren Wahrnehmung, ibid., xxi., 1899, 182-272. 

Abstrahiren und Vergleichen, ibid., xxiv., 1900, 34-82. 

Ueber Annahmen, 1902. 

Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie, 

1904: Ueber Gegenstandstheorie, 1-50. 

Ueber die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie im System der 

Wissenschaften, Zeits. f. Philos. u. philos. Kritik, cxxix., 

1906, 48-93; 1907, 155-207; cxxx., 1907, 1-46. 

In Sachen der Annahmen, Zeits. f. Psychol., xli., 1906, 1-14. 
C. Stump f, Erscheinungen und psychische Funktionen, 1907. 

(Aus den Abhandlungen der konigl. preuss. Akademie der 

Wissenschaften vom Jahre 1906.) 

Zur Einteilung der Wissenschaften, 1907. (Aus den Abhand- 
lungen der konigl. preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften 

vom Jahre 1906.) 

The range of discussion, to which these references 
may serve as introduction, is already wide, and the 
questions at issue are of great moment for a systematic 



200 NOTES TO LECTURE I 

psychology; they lie, however, beyond the scope of 
the present Lectures. 

6 R. S. Woodworth, Non-Sensory Components of Sense 
Perception, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and 
Scientific Methods, iv., 1907, 170 ; The Consciousness of 
Relation, Essays Philosophical and Psychological in 
Honour of William James, 1908, 502 ; M. W. Calkins, 
The Abandonment of Sensationalism in Psychology, 
American Journal of Psychology, xx., 1909, 269 ff. 

7 See my Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of 
Feeling and Attention, 1908, 172. Useful references 
are: 

C. Sigwart, Die Unterschiede der Individualitaten, Kleine 

Schriften, ii., 1889, 212 ff. 
W. Dilthey, Beitrage zum Studium der Individuality, Sitzungs- 

ber. d. kgl. preuss. Akad. d. Wiss., 1896, 295 ff. 
M. Dessoir, Beitrage zur Aesthetik, i. Seelenkunst und Psycho- 

gnosis, Arch. f. syst. Philos., iii., 1897, 374 ff. 
L. W. Stern, Ueber Psychologic der individuellen Differenzen, 

1900. (Bibliography, 133 ff.) 
E. Meumann, Vorlesungen zur Einfiihrung in die experiment elle 

Pddagogik und ihre psychologischen Orundlagen, i., 1907, 

322 ff. (Bibliography, 552 ff.) 
R. Muller-Freienfels, Individuelle Verschiedenheiten in der 

Kunst, Zeits. f. Psych., 1., 1908, 1 ff. 

It was the search for individual differences that 
prompted Ribot to undertake his study of 'general ideas' : 
Enquete sur les idees generales, Revue philos., xxxii., 
1891, 376 ff. ; Resultat d'une enquete sur les concepts, 
Internat. Congress of Exper. Psych., 1892, 20 ff. (re- 
marks by H. Sidgwick, 23 f . ; note by E. E. C. Jones, 
181); The Evolution of General Ideas, 1899, 111 ff. 
Ribot wished to ascertain if there are types of concep- 
tion as there are types of imagination or ideation, and 
found in fact three such types, the concrete, the visual 



NOTES TO LECTURE I 201 

typographic and the auditory. His method (the pre- 
sentation of single words or of sentences) anticipates 
in crude form those of Binet, of the Wiirzburg investi- 
gators, and of Woodworth. His most important re- 
sult is, without question, the discovery that meaning 
oftentimes has no representation in consciousness. "We 
learn to understand a concept as we learn to walk, dance, 
fence, or play a musical instrument; it is a habit, i.e. 
an organised memory" (General Ideas, 131). 

8 F. Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its 
Development, 1883. "Scientific men, as a class, have 
feeble powers of visual representation" (87). "After 
maturity is reached, the further advance of age does 
not seem to dim the faculty, but rather the reverse, . . . 
but advancing years are sometimes accompanied by a 
growing habit of hard abstract thinking, and in these 
cases . . . the faculty undoubtedly becomes impaired. 
. . . Language and book-learning certainly tend to dull 
it" (99 f.)- "I could mention instances within my own 
experience in which the visualising faculty has become 
strengthened by practice" (106). "I cannot discover 
any closer relation between high visualising power and 
the intellectual faculties than between verbal memory 
and those same faculties" (111). 

Binet is evidently writing from an imperfect memory 
when he says (Binet, 111) : "il y a . . . une opinion tres 
repandue d'apres laquelle les images intenses se rencon- 
trent chez les femmes et les enfants, tandis que ceux qui 
ont l'habitude de Pabstraction, les adultes reflechis, n'ont 
pas de belles images de la realite, mais de pauvres 
fantomes sans couleur et sans relief. Je suppose que 
toutes ces questions sont un peu embarrassees d'idees 



202 NOTES TO LECTURE I 

precon^es; ce ne sont point la des observations regu- 
lieres, et il ne faut pas s'y arreter trop longtemps." But 
Galton's statements are both careful and explicit. Cf. 
W. James, Principles of Psych., i., 1890, 266. 

9 The following is a characteristic illustration of my 
use of imagery. I had to carry across the room, from 
book-shelf to typewriter, four references, — three vol- 
ume-numbers of a magazine, three dates, and four page- 
numbers. The volumes and years I said aloud, and 
then consigned to the care of the perseverative tenden- 
cies. Of the four page-numbers, I held two by visual 
images, one by auditory, and one by kinsesthesis. After 
I had written the references out, it occurred to me that 
the procedure — which at the time was adopted naturally 
and without reflection — had been somewhat dangerous; 
the record proved, however, to be accurate. Experi- 
ences of the sort are, indeed, very common with me, and 
I should hardly have noted the occurrence had I not 
been recently engaged in the writing of this Lecture. 

Similar tricks of retention are, very possibly, em- 
ployed by imaginal minds at large. But, until we have 
detailed descriptions, the range of the mixed memory- 
type must remain uncertain. I put the above observa- 
tion on record in the hope that it may elicit others of 
like tenor. — It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add 
that the 'having' of images and the 'using' of images 
are very different things, and that the determination 
of type must always take account of conditions. See, 
e.g., H. J. Watt, Experimented Beitrage zu einer 
Theorie des Denkens,* Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., iv., 1905, 
312, 368 ; ibid., vii., 1906, Literaturbericht, 44, 47 ; M. 

* Cited, in the following Notes, as 'Watt.' 



NOTES TO LECTURE I 203 

F. Washburn, A. Bell and L. Muckenhoupt, A Com- 
parison of Methods for the Determination of Ideational 
Type, Amer. Journ. Psychol., xvii., 1906, 126; E. L. 
Thorndike, On the Function of Visual Images, Journ. 
Philos. Psych. Set. Meth., iv., 1907, 324 ff. ; J. Segal, 
Ueber den Reproduktionstypus und das Reproduzieren 
von Vorstellungen, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych. , xii., 1908, 
124 ff. 

For a discussion of internal speech, see J. M. Baldwin, 
Mental Development in the Child and the Race : Methods 
and Processes, 1906, 409 ff. 

10 The topic of visual reading is discussed by E. B. 
Huey, The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, 
1908, 10, 117 ff., 180 f. Huey gives, as a "very rare" 
instance of rapid reading, the case of a mathematician 
who "has read the whole of a standard novel of 320 
pages in two and one-fourth hours." "I am in- 
clined to think," he says, "that at any such speed the 
meanings suggested immediately by the visual forms 
suffice for all but the more important parts, and that 
these meanings are felt sufficiently, without inner ut- 
terance, to permit selection of what is more important, 
the more important places themselves having a fleeting 
inner utterance to vivify their meaning. We must in- 
deed experiment further before we can conclude against 
the possibility of mainly visual reading, at the very 
high speeds." 

I should not have supposed that the rate of reading 
mentioned by Huey was exceptional; I certainly often 
read at the same or at a higher speed. But my rate 
varies enormously, both with the subject-matter of the 
work read and with my purpose in reading. I usually 



204 NOTES TO LECTURE I 

take a new book, or a new article, at a rush, and then — 
if I want to savour the style or to assimilate the details — 
go over it again slowly and minutely. It is surprising 
how accurate an impression may be gained by hurried, 
selective reading, 'skimming, 9 if only one has had suffi- 
cient practice; I come back to this point in Note 13 
below. 

There is no question, I think, that purely visual read- 
ing is possible, and that its habit may be cultivated. 
Here is an instance. I used to read the abbreviation 
Vp. 9 in terms of internal speech, as Versuchsperson. 
Then, for a time, I read it as Vop or Vup; later, again, 
as a mere breath on the V ; now I take it altogether by 
eye. The same thing holds of such forms as bzw., u. 
dgl. m. 9 m. E. 9 u. s. w. 9 etc. When I am reading care- 
fully, and when the abbreviations have an argumenta- 
tive significance, I take them by a shadowy form of the 
kinesthetic feels discussed in Lecture V.; in ordinary 
reading, however, they are simply seen.* 

Professor Whipple (whose general type is auditory- 
motor) tells me that he has had similar experiences, but 
far more frequently with foreign languages than with 
English. I have not noticed this difference in my own 
case. 

* In my study of the authors now under discussion, I at first 
read the abbreviation Bsl. as Bewusstseinslage. This soon simpli- 
fied to something like 'bizzle.' This, again, simplified to a mixture 
of internal speech and vision; the b came in terms of speech, and 
the si tailed off in terms of sight alone. Oftentimes there was 
an unpleasant hitch or catch in consciousness ("I can't pronounce 
that!"), which was due, apparently, to a momentary inhibition of 
breathing, accompanied by an incipient shrug. At present, I get 
either the speech-sight mixture without the hitch, or I read over 
the abbreviation visually. 



NOTES TO LECTURE I 205 

11 I have practically no gift of musical composition, 
and my skill as a performer is below zero. On the other 
hand, I come of a musical family, and was fortunate 
enough to hear a great deal of the best piano music in 
my childhood. My musical endowment — apart from this 
haunting by orchestral performances — consists in a 
quick and comprehensive understanding of a composi- 
tion, a sort of logical and aesthetic Einfilhlung, an 
immediate (or very rapid) grasp of the sense and fitness 
of the musical structure. There is thus a fairly close 
analogy between my apprehension of music and the 
visual schematising of arguments which is described in 
the Lecture. It would be interesting to know whether 
the correlation is at all general. — Cf. Lecture V., 
Note 22. 

My use of the visual schema itself suggests the re- 
course to simple mechanical analogies (models of the 
atom, representation of gravitational attractions by 
means of pulsating bodies in a liquid medium, etc., etc.) 
for the illustration of physical phenomena of a more 
complicated kind, which is often said to be characteristic 
of British physicists. Galton mentions physicists only 
casually (113). 

12 In this regard, my type is that of Marguerite and 
not of Armande : see Binet, 155 ff. Galton (Inquiries, 
109) speaks of persons who "have a complete mastery 
over their mental images," and remarks that "this free 
action of a vivid visualising faculty is of much im- 
portance in connection with the higher processes of gen- 
eralised thought, though it is commonly put to no such 
purpose." It is, accordingly, only natural that I have 
no such imaginal experiences as those of Goethe (series 



206 NOTES TO LECTURE I 

of unfolding roses ; WerJce, Weimarer Ausgabe, Abth. 
2, xi., 282) or of G. Henslow (spontaneous transforma- 
tion of images: Galton, Inquiries, 159 ff.). 

13 Huey, in discussing aids to quick and selective 
reading (op. cit., 411, 423), mentions with approval 
the German use of capital initials for substantives, the 
use of italics, etc. "The special temporary character- 
isation of the important words or phrases in any given 
article, by changes in type, etc., may also aid much in 
speed and ease of reading whenever the reader's aim is 
selective, purposing to get quickly the kernels or gist of 
the matter read." The German capitals become so ac- 
customed that I doubt if they do any service. Wundt, 
it is true, argues that "jede Einbusse an difFerenzirend- 
en Merkmalen eine Erschwerung der Unterscheidung 
bedeutet, die dadurch, dass man sie nicht mehr bemerkt, 
noch nicht verschwindet" (Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 
608) ; but an argument of this sort may easily be pushed 
too far. On the other points I was formerly of Huey's 
opinion ; now, however, I rather suspect the value of the 
change of type. For one thing, spaced or italicised 
matter is difficult to read ; the eye balks at it. For an- 
other, I very often find that the spaced or italicised 
items are not those that I myself should wish to have 
emphasised. Just as a summary, while useful in its 
way, is a very dangerous substitute for the article 
which it professes to reproduce, so are the author's ital- 
ics very unreliable guides to the contents of his pages; 
for the motives that prompt the writer to accentuate are 
not necessarily those that dominate the reader. It is 
both amusing and instructive to have one of your own 
essays read aloud by an intelligent student, and to note 



NOTES TO LECTURE I 207 

the slurring of what you thought important and the 
stressing of what appeals to the reader. 

So I should suppose that the ideal arrangement for a 
text-book, e.g., is that which allows of short and sharply 
separated paragraphs, as an aid to the untrained at- 
tention, but which within the paragraph keeps as a rule 
to a strict uniformity of type. "Any arrangement," 
Huey tells us, "which makes comprehensive skimming 
an easy matter will be of great benefit for large parts 
of our reading": but the skimming which relies upon 
italics or black-faced type is scrappy rather than com- 
prehensive. The ability to skim, like the ability to cram, 
is a valuable intellectual asset; only one must learn to 
skim for oneself, as one must learn to prepare one's own 
abstract or digest for memorising. 

In my experience, the headlong first reading of a 
new work, to which reference was made in Note 10 
above, is for the most part visual and diffusedly organic 
in character. I have never attempted its analysis, un- 
der experimental conditions ; and the procedure is so 
habitual that a complete analysis would at the best be 
exceedingly difficult. On the side of vision, I seem to 
pay little regard to headings or italics ; I read straight 
ahead, taking in the first few words of a sentence and 
then jumping to catch-words; sometimes I skip entire 
sentences, even entire paragraphs. If there is a hitch 
of any sort, breathing is inhibited, and internal speech 
appears. The organic reaction is wide-spread, and 
strongly affective. I warm eagerly to any novelty of 
method, to the original application of a familiar idea, to 
any extension of experiment, to anything that supports 
or amplifies my own thinking; I am troubled and rest- 



208 NOTES TO LECTURE I 

less when I find a discrepancy between evidence and in- 
ference, a reference omitted, a set of observations that 
threatens to overturn a belief. There is also, I think, 
a fairly marked play of facial expression; I have 
caught myself smiling or frowning, pursing the lips or 
raising the eyebrows (see Lecture V., Note 22). This is a 
clumsy and banal account of a very vivid and varied 
experience; it may, however, have been worth while to 
emphasise the fact that sight and attitudinal feel (Lec- 
ture V.) do my skimming for me, with only occasional 
assistance from internal speech. 

14 Galton (Inquiries, 157 f.) remarks that a "curious 
and abiding fantasy of certain persons is invariably to 
connect visualised pictures with words, the same picture 
'to the same word." The figures "are not the capricious 
creations of the fancy of the moment, but are the regu- 
lar concomitants of the words, and have been so as far 
back as the memory is able to recall." Galton does not 
explain whether these visual pictures are merely ac- 
cessory, or whether they form part of the psychological 
meaning of the words. 

One of Messer's observers replies to the stimulus-word 
Christin as follows: "Als ich 'Christ — ' gelesen hatte, 
optisches Bild einer weissen Wachskerze (diese Vorstel- 
lung habe ich immer bei 'Christ' ; sie erscheint mir blod- 
sinnig) . . ." Here, too, we are left in doubt whether 
the visual associate is accessory or has its share in mean- 
ing; the 'foolishness' of the image, to a later reflection, 
is not decisive. See A. Messer, Experimentell-psycholo- 
gische Untersuchungen iiber das Denken,* Arch. f. d. 
ges. Psych., viii., 1906, 68. Another instance is fur- 

* Cited, in the following Notes, as 'Messer.' 



NOTES TO LECTURE I 209 

nished by H. Sidgwick (Internat. Congress of Eooper. 
Psych., 1892, 24). "In his reasonings on political econ- 
omy he found that the general terms were almost al- 
ways accompanied by some visual image besides and 
along with the image of the word itself; but the images 
were often curiously arbitrary and sometimes almost un- 
decipherably symbolic. For example, it took him a long 
time to discover that an odd symbolic image which ac- 
companied the word Value' was a faint, partial image 
of a man putting something in a scale. On the other 
hand in logical or mathematical reasoning he could 
usually detect no image except that of the printed 
word." Cf. W. C. Bagley, Amer. Journ. Psych. , xii., 
1900, 118 f.; Binet, 100. 

Many of my own students, and a number of persons 
in my audience at the University of Illinois, have in- 
formed me that the visual, pictorial representation of 
meaning is natural and familiar to them. But like 
attracts like; and we shall not know the relative fre- 
quency of the type until we have made one of those 
statistical investigations which Binet (299) hands over 
to "les auteurs americains, qui aiment faire grand. 55 — 

In general, there seems to be no more reason to doubt 
the occurrence of pictorial, non-verbal thinking than 
there is to doubt that of a purely visual reading. Watt 
became familiar with it: "da werden die Gesichtsvor- 
stellungen oft Arbeitsplatze fur das Denken 55 (312; cf. 
the discussion of visual ideas, 361 ff., 432 f., and the 
recommendation of further enquiry, 436) ; and Messer 
accords it a certain place in the process of thought (87) ; 
cf. also Bovet, Arch, de Psych., viii., 1908, 26, 37. 
For certain minds, at certain times, Taine 5 s statement 

14 



210 NOTES TO LECTURE I 

that "l'esprit agissant est un polypier d'images mu- 
tuellement dependantes" would then be strictly and liter- 
ally true {Be V intelligence, i., 1883, 124). 

15 J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Under- 
standing, [1690] Bk. iv., ch. 7, §9. 

16 G. Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles 
of Human Knowledge, [1710] Introduction, §§10, 13. 
The passages have been rearranged. D. Hume, A 
Treatise of Human Nature, [1739] Bk. i., pt. i., §7. 

17 W. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics, ii., 1859, 
300 (Lect. xxxv.). 

18 T. H. Huxley, Hump, 1881, ch. iv., 96 f. 

19 See the discussions of Binet, 113, 141 ff., 150, 153; 
Watt, 364 f., 431 ff. ; Watt, Literaturbericht, Arch. 
f. d. ges. Psych., vii., 1906, 42 ff. ; Messer, 55 f ., 85 ff. ; 
K. Buhler, Tatsachen und Probleme zu einer Psychol- 
ogie der Denkvorgange, i. Ueber Gedanken,* Arch. f. 
d. ges. Psych., ix., 1907, 363 f. (cf. 352) ; A. Wresch- 
ner, Die Reproduktion und Assoziation von Vorstel- 
lungen^ 1907-1909, 158 ff., etc. 

Messer writes (85 f.): "je lebhafter und anschau- 
licher, je reicher an individuellen Ziigen [die repro- 
duzierten Gesichtsvorstellungen] sind, um so weniger 
decken sie sich mit der mehr oder minder allgemeinen 
Bedeutung der Worte. . . . Je schematischer, blasser, 
unbestimmter und insofern 'allgemeiner' die optischen 
Vorstellungen sind, un so weniger unterscheiden sie sich 
also im Grunde von jener anderen Klasse der (unanschau- 
lichen) Bedeutungserlebnisse." He seems, however, to 
have anticipated this result; at any rate he takes it as 

* Cited, in the following Notes as 'Buhler .' 

t Cited, in the following Notes, as 'Wreschner.' 



NOTES TO LECTURE I 211 

a matter of course. I give my own experience in the 
text. 

20 A. Fraser (Visualisation as a Chief Source of the 
Psychology of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, 
Amer. Journ. Psych., iv., 1891, 230 ff.) remarks that 
"in Berkeley and Hume we have the philosophy of 
youth. At the age of twenty-five both these men had 
completed their chief philosophical works. And here 
again we have an illustration of Galton's results. Their 
powers of visualisation were much higher than in the 
case of [Hobbes and Locke] — so high, in fact, that 
they could visualise enough to make them believe that 
anything they couldn't visualise did not exist" (241). 
Locke "was somewhat advanced in years when he pre- 
sented his philosophical works . . . ; and ... his philos- 
ophy . . . was under the necessity of leaving a great 
part of the verbal web untranslated" (ibid.). Fraser 
does not discuss the passage from the fourth Book. 

This argument can hardly be accepted in its appli- 
cation to the general idea; conceptualism as well as 
nominalism may have a basis in visualisation (cf. Fra- 
ser's own admission, quoted in the following Note) ; 
Locke and Berkeley differed in the mode or character 
of their visualisation, but not necessarily in visualising 
power. The argument would apply only if we could be- 
lieve that Locke did not actually see his "general idea 
of a triangle," but — to put it bluntly — made up the 
idea out of words. I grant that there is something, 
both in context and style, to suggest that view. Never- 
theless, I get the definite impression that Locke is writ- 
ing from an introspective cue ; we have, in the passage, 
simply one of those bits of translation out of psychol- 



212 NOTES TO LECTURE I 

ogy into the logic of common sense with which the 
Essay abounds. The logical aspect is again to the 
fore in Bk. ii., ch. xi., §9. But in Bk. ii., ch. xxxii., §8 
we are told that the abstract idea is "something in the 
mind between the thing that exists, and the name that 
is given to it"; and in Bk. iii., ch. iii., §9 the intro- 
spective appeal is directly made. 

It is very instructive to compare the parallel pas- 
sages in the writings of J. S. Mill. If we had no more 
than the bare references to the selective power of at- 
tention in the Logic (1846,* Bk. ii., ch. v., §1 ; Bk. iv., 
ch. ii., §1), we might well suppose that Mill was arguing 
only, and not introspecting. But the passage in An 
Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 
1865, 320 f ., bears all the marks of a first-hand observa- 
tion, — marks that are made the plainer by the writer's 
theoretical confusion (James, Princ. of Psych., i., 470). 
And observation reappears in the note to J. Mill's Ana- 
lysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, i., 1869, 
289, where the artificiality of Locke's account of the idea 
of triangle is expressly recognised. Mill's psychology is 
annoyingly schematic; but I do not think that any 
reader of psychological insight will doubt that he is 
psychologising. — 

Relevant observations are noted by Binet, 153 ; Mes- 
ser, 54. Cf . also the ideation of Eigenschaften, Messer, 
56 f. 

21 So Fraser {op. cit., 244) : "In this case the generic 
character does not consist in the name, it is in the idea. 
Neither is the idea a 'blur,' it is clear and distinct. To 
what extent this degree of visualisation exists in the 

* I have not been able to consult the first edition, of 1843. 



NOTES TO LECTURE I 213 

world I cannot say, but there can be no doubt as to its 
possibility." Binet (146 f.) is somewhat sceptical. 
"L'idee de cette combinaison [d'images particulieres, 
individuelles], qui est toute gratuite, car personne n'a 
pu P observer, appartient a Huxley, qui a donne une 
forme tres originale a son hypothese en comparant la 
formation des idees generales a ces photographies com- 
posites que Galton a obtenues en superposant sur une 
meme plaque les images de plusieurs objets un peu 
analogues. . . . L'explication de Huxley fut d'abord 
acceptee avec faveur, generalisee sans retenue, et finale- 
ment elle a ete reduite par Ribot a un role plus modeste. 
. . . Je n'ai point rencontre chez [mes deux sujets] 
d'images dans lesquelles se marquerait avec evidence la 
combinaison de plusieurs perceptions differentes." Of 
course, the whole question is a matter of individual 
psychology: but I have no doubt that Huxley did, in 
his own case and under the conditions of his special oc- 
cupation, observe the formation of the type-idea, in 
stages, from the combination of individual perceptions. 
"Hamilton, op. cit., 312. 

23 Biihler, 363. 

24 Further instances were supplied by members of my 
audience at the University of Illinois. I mention one 
case only, that of a trained psychologist. Meaning, 
for this observer, consisted psychologically in the kin- 
aesthetic image (sometimes connected with actual in- 
nervation) of lifting the right hand and arm, as if to 
open a closed box. Here, as in the examples given in 
the text, the explanation comes ex post facto; the ex- 
perience of meaning, as such, has nothing in it to 
suggest or recall the opening of the box; but reflection 



214 NOTES TO LECTURE I 

shows that the imaged gesture is of the box-opening 
kind. Meaning, therefore, is something that you re- 
veal or disclose. 

25 Organic Images, Journ. PhUos. Psych. Set. Meth., 
i., 1904, 38. 

26 1 find a similar observation in Messer (59). One 
of the observers reports "eine gewisse innere Zuneigung. 
Wenn ich nachtraglich versuche, eine gleichartige Be- 
wegung auszufiihren, wie sie mir gegeben zu sein 
schien, so sehe ich, dass die Bewegungen alle viel zu 
lebhaft und grob ausf alien als die friiher erlebten" (ital- 
ics mine). 

27 This account has been compiled, for the most part, 
from notes jotted down as I read the successive ex- 
perimental studies from the Wiirzburg laboratory. It 
is, therefore, relevant only to the individual psychol- 
ogy of thought, — thinking, reading, writing, teaching, — 
and not to the intellectual processes at large; while, 
even so, it has in all probability been narrowed down 
by the consideration of the specific problems raised by 
the Wiirzburg school. However, it is with that school — 
with Marbe and Orth, Watt and Ach, Messer and Biihler 
— that the Lectures are mainly concerned. 

28 Diet. Philos. Psych., ii., 1902, 515 f.— A great 
deal of confusion would be avoided if psychologists at 
large recognised the fact that the sensation of experi- 
mental psychology is a simple, meaningless (or, rather, 
non-meaningful) process, definable only by an enumer- 
ation of its attributes. Until this recognition is ac- 
corded, discussion between the experimentalists and the 
non-experimentalists (I apologise for the negative term !) 
must be largely a matter of beating the air. I have 



NOTES TO LECTURE I 215 

tried to do my share towards clarity, — e.g., in Exp. 
Psych., L, ii., 1901, 3 f . ; Feeling and Attention, 1908, 
Lect. i. ; Text-book, 1909, 46 ff. But James has defined 
sensation as the (cognitively and chronologically) first 
thing in consciousness ; the Dictionary offers a definition 
which it admits to be "not strictly psychological" and 
which ignores experimental usage; and psychology in 
general still shows the uncertainty which Bain deplored 
(Mill's Analysis, i., 65 ff.) as "causing serious embroil- 
ments in philosophical controversy." Experimental 
psychology has, of course, no exclusive rights in the 
word; but it has the right to define for itself, and to 
have its definition respected within its own universe of 
discourse. It is, for instance, axiomatic for the ex- 
perimentalist that a sensation cannot function alone; 
at least two sensations must come together, if there is 
to be a meaning; the single element can do nothing 
more than go on; so far as cognition or function is 
concerned, sentire semper idem, et non sentire, ad idem 
recidunt. 

29 Ibid., i., 1901, 80. 

30 A. Seth, Maris Place in the Cosmos and Other Es- 
says, 1897, 47, 65. The addresses from which these 
quotations are taken contain some useful criticism; but 
I do not recommend them to the reader who wishes to 
acquaint himself with the aim and status of experi- 
mental psychology. 

31 H. Ebbinghaus, Ueber das Gedachtnis, 1885, 31 ff. 

32 In order to make my point clearly and sharply, I 
have here spoken as if modern psychology were de- 
scriptive only, and not descriptive and explanatory. 
Later Lectures furnish the necessary corrective: to 



216 NOTES TO LECTURE I 

bring explanation into the present discussion would 
obscure the issue. 

33 W. Wundt, Ueber psychische Causalitat und das 
Princip des psychophysischen Parallelismus, Philos. Stu- 
dies x., 1894, 123. 

34 Zur Lehre von den Gemiithsbewegungen, ibid., vi., 
1891, 389. Cf. 391: "Die Objecte der Psychologie 
sind sammtlich Vorgange, Ereignisse." 

35 Princ. of Psych., i., 243 f. Woodworth reinterprets: 
"I do not understand the author of the 'Stream of 
Thought 5 to assert that feelings of relation must always 
be evanescent" {Essays Philos. and Psychol., 1908, 
494). 

36 Ibid., 300.^ It is curious to note the differences 
in psychological attitude! Stout, commenting on this 
passage (which I have quoted with hearty approval), 
remarks: "Could anything be more perverse? Profes- 
sor James is looking for his spectacles when he has 
them on. He is seeking for his own 'palpitating in- 
ward life,' the activity in which his very being consists, 
and he expects to find it in certain particulars, certain 
special contents of presentation," and so on (Analyt. 
Psych., i., 1896, 162). But this — with allowance made 
for the caricature — is, I should suppose, precisely what 
every psychologist, as psychologist, must try and ex- 
pect to do. On the other hand, Stout apparently ap- 
proves James 9 account of the feelings of relation (218), 
which I have criticised. He and I, then, are opposed but 
consistent; and James can, accordingly, satisfy neither 
of us. 

37 Analysis, i., 1869, 90 f., 115. 

38 Bk. vi., ch. iv., §3. 



NOTES TO LECTURE I 217 

39 Examination, 1865, 286 f . ; cf. the preceding 
chapter, on Inseparable Association, and editorial note 
in J. Mill's Analysis, i., 106 ff. 

40 Treatise of Human Nature, bk. i., pt. i., §4. 

41 So Biihler, 328. Cf . F. H. Bradley, The Principles 
of Logic, 1883, 320 f . ; W. James, Trine, of Tsych., i., 
1890, 161 ; G. F. Stout, A Manual of Tsych., 1899, 
110 ff . ; C. Stumpf, Ueber d. psychol. Ursprung d. 
Raumvorstellung, 1873, 103 ff. ; Tonpsychologie, ii., 
1890, 208 ff. (see other refs. in Index); W. Wundt, 
Thysiol. Tsych., ii., 1902, 500 f., 684 (see refs. under 
Result ante in Index). 

42 D. Hartley, Observations on Man, [1749] pt. i., 
ch. i., §2, prop, xii., cor. 1 (ed. of 1810, i., 78). 

43 See i., 205. 
"Analysis, ii., 1869, 190 f. 

45 See, e.g., P. Flechsig, Ueber die Associationscen- 
tren des menschlichen Gehirns, and the following discus- 
sion, in Dritter Internationaler Congress f. Tsychologie, 
1897, 49 ff. 

46 See, e.g., H. Miinsterberg, Grundziige der Tsychol- 
ogie, i., 1900, 307 ff. 

47 W. Wundt, Ueber die Definition der Psychologie, 
Thilos. Studien, xii., 1895, 51 ff. 



NOTES TO LECTURE II 

1 R. F. A. Hoernle, Image, Idea and Meaning, Mind, 
N. S., xvi., 1907, 82 f. The writer adds that James' 
"account is wholly untrue as regards our ordinary con- 
sciousness of meaning. For what normally occupies the 
focus of attention is the meaning, the objective reference, 
whereas the sign forms the fringe, of which we have but 
a more or less shadowy consciousness. Professor James 
exactly reverses the true state of affairs, for according to 
his theory, the sign should occupy the centre of atten- 
tion, and the meaning form the vague background. 5 ' 
The fringe-terminology is, no doubt, apt to set up mis- 
leading associations (G. F. Stout, Analytic Psych., i., 
1896, 93). But, as I have tried to show in my Feeling 
and Attention, 239 ff., image and fringe are, for James, 
both alike in the focus of attention : fringe is not to be 
rendered as "vague background." 

2 F. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Stand- 
punkte, i., 1874, bk. ii., ch. v. (summary, p. 255). 

s Ibid., 115 f.; cf. 127, 260. Brentano has other 
criteria, but these are of secondary importance. Cf. 
A. Hofler, Psychologie, 1897, 2 ff. 

4 Ibid., 103 f . 

5 Lectures on Metaphysics, ii., 432 (Lect. xlii). 

6 Op. cit., 117 f. 

7 Ibid,, 167. 

8 O. Kiilpe, Outlines of Psychology, 1909, 227 f. 

9 G. T. Ladd, Psychology, Descriptive and Explana- 
tory, 1894, 181. 

218 



NOTES TO LECTURE II 219 

10 Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 112 ff., 121 f., 332, 
514 f., 552 ff., 625; Grundriss d. Psych., 1905, 262 
(Engl., 1907, 243); etc. 

11 Cf. T. Nakashima, Contributions to the Study of 
the Affective Processes, Amer. Journ. Psych., xx., 1909, 
181 f., 193. 

12 Brentano, op. cit., 261, 264. 

13 Ibid., 161. "Mit unmittelbarer Evidenz zeigt uns 
die innere Wahrnehmung dass das Horen einen von ihm 
selbst verschiedenen Inhalt hat"; "eine Meinung, die 
so deutlich der inner en Erfahrung und dem Urtheile 
jedes Unbefangenen widerspricht." 

14 Ibid., 162. Brentano refers to A. Bain, Mental 
Science, 1872, 199 (bk. ii., ch. vii., Perception of a 
Material World, no. 4): "In purely passive feeling, 
as in those of our sensations that do not call forth our 
muscular energies, we are not perceiving matter. . . . 
The feeling of warmth, as in the bath, is an example. 
. . . All our senses may yield similar experiences, if we 
resign ourselves to their purely sensible or passive side." 
The same doctrine of 'passive sensibility 5 may be found 
in the notes to J. Mill's Analysis, i., 5 f ., 35 ; ii., 149. 
Brentano also refers, in general terms, to J. S. Mill's 
Examination (I suppose, to chs. xi. and xii.) and to his 
notes in the Analysis (I suppose, to such notes as that in 
i., 229 ff.). I have preferred to take the obvious illus- 
tration from J. Mill himself: Analysis, i., 224 f. (cf. 
16 ff.). 

It should be added, by way of caution, that the 
criticism of associationism in Lecture I. holds of all the 
passages here cited ; we are taking Brentano's argument 
at its face-value. 



220 NOTES TO LECTURE II 

15 Examination, 212. The criticism passed upon 
Brentano in the foot-note is supported by the treatment 
of memory and expectation in S. Witasek's Grundlinien 
der Psychologie, 1908. See 290: "noch deutlicher als 
an der Wahrnehmung ist an der Erinnerung die wesent- 
liche Mitwirkung des Urteilsaktes ersichtlich" ; and 317 : 
"Ueberraschung und Erwartung . . . sind bestimmte 
eigentiimliche Arten des Eintritts, der Vorbereitung, des 
Ablaufs von Urteilen" (italics mine). 

16 Op. cit., 73 ff. 

17 In a review of Brentano's Psychologie (Mind, 
O. S., i., 1876, 122), R. Flint remarks: "As regards 
conception [Flint's translation of Vorstellung~\ , our au- 
thor is unfortunate in his language. His use of the 
term Vorstellung is extremely vague, confused, and self- 
contradictory. It is wider and looser even than Her- 
bart's or Lotze's. In fact, the term, as employed by 
him, is not only incapable of accurate translation into 
English or any other language, but corresponds to no 
generic fact, no peculiar faculty^ and no distinctive 
province of mind." These statements are, I think, jus- 
tified by the facts ; and the reason for the looseness of 
usage is, surely, that Brentano's Vorstellung is the 
direct descendant of the vis repraseniat'wa of the 
faculty psychologists. More than that: while much 
psychological water has flowed under the bridges since 
1874, and while Witasek is accordingly clearer and 
closer in definition than was his master, I believe that the 
primacy of ideation in the Grundlinien is an after-effect 
of the same faculty influence. 

18 Ibid., 81. 

19 Ibid., 6 f. 



NOTES TO LECTURE II 221 

20 Ibid., 76. 

21 Ibid., 318 f. 

22 Ibid., 281. 

23 Ibid., 280-287. Even if we concede that Witasek's 
analyses are phenomenologically correct, it would still 
remain true that phenomenology is not psychology. 
Science implies attitude, standpoint, consistent adhesion 
to a special and voluntarily selected aspect of phe- 
nomena : cf . my Text-book of Psych., 1909, §1. 

24 Brentano's psychology, despite its unfinished con- 
dition (vol. i. contains but two of the proposed six 
books), has exerted a powerful and wide-spread influ- 
ence. The tracing of this influence lies beside my 
present purpose: let the space that I have devoted to 
act and content bear witness to my appreciation of it! 
I note here only a few typical criticisms. That Bren- 
tano's psychology is a psychology of reflection has 
been urged in various connections: so, e.g., by Wundt, 
Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 234 f., 240, and by F. Jodl, 
Lehrbuch d. Pysch., 1896, 180 (in i., 1903, 211 the 
reference to Brentano is omitted). His principle of 
classification is rejected by J. Rehmke, Lehrbuch d. allg. 
Psych., 1894, 349 ff., and by W. Jerusalem, Die 
Urteilsf unction, eine psychologische und erkermtnis- 
kritische Untersuchung, 1895, 4 ff., — a book which takes 
constant account of Brentano's doctrine of judgment, 
and cites authorities for and against. In particular, 
Brentano's identification of feeling and will is criticised 
by C. von Ehrenfels, Ueber Fiihlen und Wollen: eine 
psychologische Studie, Sitzungsber. d. philos.-hist. CI. 
d. Wiener Akad., cxiv., Heft 2, 1887, §5, and by 
Rehmke, op. cit., 363 ff. ; his distinction of idea and 



222 NOTES TO LECTURE II 

judgment is criticised by Ebbinghaus, Grundzuge, i., 
1905, 183. 

These general references must suffice. Lest, however, 
I should seem to have overestimated the part played in 
Brentano's thinking by the doctrine of intentional in- 
existence, I quote the relevant passages from some 
contemporary reviews of his work. "The general im- 
pression which this chapter leaves on the mind of the 
reviewer is that a considerable number of the particular 
criticisms are just, but that the discussion as a whole 
is not successful, because these two essential questions 
are uninvestigated, viz. : Are perceptions not so in- 
separable from the act of perceiving as to be, in some 
measure at least, if not entirely, psychical phenomena? 
and, Are there really any such phenomena as those 
which our author frequently speaks of, any 'physical 
phenomena in the phantasy'?" (R. Flint, in Mind, 
O. S., i., 1876, 120.) "Von Anfang an begrenzt er 
willkurlich das Gebiet des Psychischen, indem er Tone, 
Farben, Geruch, Figur u. s. w. dem Physischen zuweist. 
Wohlgemerkt der Act des Sehens, Horens u. s. w. sowie 
die Phantasievorstellung ist psychisch, das Gesehene, 
Gehorte, Empfundene, Vorgestellte ist physisch. Offen- 
bar die grosste Willkiir! Was ist denn die Farbe, der 
Ton, sobald man vom psychischen Moment absieht? 
Doch etwas ganz Anderes als Farbe und Ton, namlich 
Molecularschwingung. . . . Man sieht, das Ganze 
ist ein unfruchtbarer Wortkram, . . . Alles gestiitzt 
auf die ganz unhaltbare Unterscheidung des Psychi- 
schen und des Physischen" (A. Horwicz, in Philos. 
Monatshefte, x., 1874, 269 f.)- "Fragen wir danach, 
so wird sich doch wohl kaum eine andere Antwort geben 



NOTES TO LECTURE II 223 

lassen als : der Unterschied zwischen dem 'Act des Vorstel- 
lens' und 'dem, was vorgestellt wird,' also zwischen dem 
Act des Sehens und der gesehenen Farbe bestehe darin, 
dass das Vorstellen diejenige Thatigkeit sey, welche die 
Vorstellung mit ihrem Inhalt (dem vorgestellten Ob- 
ject) erzeugt. Dann aber folgt unabweislich : ist das 
Vorstellen eine psychische Thatigkeit, so ist nothwendig 
auch das vorgestellte Object ein psychisches Erzeugniss 
und mithin ein psychisches Phanomen. . . . Ja, dem 
vorgestellten Object wird zunachst und vorzugsweise der 
Name: psychisches Phanomen beigelegt werden miissen. 
Denn es ist unbestreitbare Thatsache, dass das vor- 
gestellte Object zunachst und unmittelbar erscheint, der 
Act des Vorstellens dagegen nur mittelbar, mit Hilf e des 
erscheinenden Objects und von ihm aus, zur Erschei- 
nung (zum Bewusstseyn) gelangt" (H. Ulrici, in Zeits. 
f. Philos. u. philos. Kritik, N. F. lxvii., 1875, 293 f.). 
I have not purposely picked out the unfavourable no- 
tices ; but, so far as I have read, the appreciative reviews 
(e.g., J. Rehmke, Philos. Monatshefte, xi., 1875, 113 
ff.) simply postpone their criticism till the appearance 
of the second volume; and the second volume has not 
appeared. 

25 1 therefore subscribe to Kiilpe's statement : "es 
giebt keine Thatigkeit des Empfindens oder Vorstellens 
oder Wahrnehmens, die neben dem Wahrgenommenen, 
Vorgestellten, Empfundenen eine besondere Existenz 
hatte" (Das Ich und die Aussenwelt, i., Philos. Studien, 
vii., 1892, 405 ; cf. Outlines of Psych., 1909, 25 f.). But 
I think, at the same time, that the logical or phenom- 
enological dualism is a distorted reflection of psycholog- 
ical fact. 



224 NOTES TO LECTURE II 

G. Spiller (The Mind of Man, 1902, 135) remarks: 
"to me this distinction [between act and content of 
presentation] appears untenable, as would be the sug- 
gestion that one could distinguish between the act of " 
a stone falling and the stone which is falling. . . . An 
act of presentation ... is something presented. It 
is a misfortune for psychology that men with anti-scien- 
tific interests like Brentano profess to be psychologists, 
and champion opinions on the subject that have no real 
psychological value." I subscribe, again, to the factual 
criticism, but I should be sorry to lose anything that 
Brentano has written; I know of no modern psycholo- 
gist whose work is more challenging, insistent, thought- 
compelling. 

26 G. F. Stout, A Manual of Psych., 1899, 56 f. 
Stout's views on classification are set forth in three 
works: the Analytic Psych., 1896; the Manual,* and 
The Groundwork of Psych., 1903. I must go into some 
little detail regarding them. 

(1) In the Manual, as the quotation shows, knowing, 
feeling and striving are the ultimate modes of being 
conscious of an object, and human consciousness is nor- 
mally concerned with some object. The 'normally' is 
explained by the following sentence: "In waking life, 
we are usually, and perhaps always, perceiving some- 
thing or thinking about something." Why should there 
be any doubt? Apparently, because those modifica- 

* I learn from Mind, N. S. x., 1901, 54>5 that a second edition 
of this work appeared in 1901. The American publishers, how- 
ever, are still supplying the edition of 1899, from which I am 
accordingly obliged to quote. I merely note the statement (547) 
that Stout "no longer identifies subconsciousness with Sentience'"; 
I cannot tell how it is to be interpreted. 



NOTES TO LECTURE II 225 

tions of consciousness which are capable of fulfilling the 
presentative function may exist even when they are not 
the means of cognising objects; there is, at any given 
moment, much material of experience which is to that 
extent without objective reference (68 f.). Cognition, 
as modification of consciousness, may be out of function, 
and may thus become sentience or subconsciousness. 
There is, then, the bare possibility that our conscious- 
ness may be objectless, and we ourselves merely sentient. 
Altogether objectless? What of the qualifying 'to 
that extent'? This is explained in Analyt. Psych., i., 
48 f. (quoted in the Manual). "They [i.e., the modi- 
fications of consciousness just referred to] may exist 
as possible material for discriminative thinking without 
being actually utilised to the full extent in which they 
are susceptible of being utilised." "The essential point 
is the antithesis between the detailed determinateness 
of presentation [i.e., of the presented objects] and the 
comparative indeterminateness of discriminative think- 
ing" (italics mine). The meaning seems to be that sen- 
tience stands to cognition or knowing as inattentive, 
diffused and obscure apprehension stands to attentive, 
individual and clear apprehension. Cf. A. P., 180: 
"the distinction between attention and inattention is 
. . . coincident with the distinction between noetic and 
anoetic experience." 

The difference, therefore, appears to be a difference 
of degree. "We have no sufficient ground for asserting 
that any experience of a normal human being is so com- 
pletely anoetic that it has no objective reference what- 
ever" ; "the indefinite objective reference has for its 
vehicle a single massive sentience" (A. P., 180 f.). 

15 



226 NOTES TO LECTURE II 

Yet we read in A. P., 50 that "thought and sentience are 
fundamentally distinct mental functions"; and this 
'thought' is identical with the cognition of the Manual 
(69). Hence the difference must, at the same time, be 
a difference in kind! So, in the Manual itself, we find 
that sensation can exist "without cognitive function"; 
we may "have a variation in the sense-experience which 
makes no difference to cognition" (120; italics mine). 
Sensations "may exist as possible material for percep- 
tual consciousness, without being actually utilised" 
(130). The corresponding passage in A. P., 48 reads, 
as we have seen, "without being actually utilised to the 
full extent in which they are susceptible of being util- 
ised"; but the qualification, retained in the earlier 
quotation of Manual 69, is now omitted. Cf. the 
Groundwork, 55 : nothing is said here of sentience or 
subconsciousness or anoetic experience; but the objects 
of the "outlying field of inattention" are "in no way 
developed in consciousness" and "do not form part of a 
stream of thought or train of ideas" (italics mine). So 
the A. P., 113: "Agreeable and disagreeable experiences 
may exist apart from objective reference" (italics mine). 
And even the passage just quoted (180 f.) qualifies its 
statement by referring to the 'normal' human being, and 
goes on to say that the mass of sensations and imagery 
"which constitute the field of inattention at any moment 
occupy this position because they do not refer to the 
. . . discriminated object which specially occupies 
our thoughts. Nevertheless, they may mediate an in- 
determine awareness" (italics mine). May? But do 
they? — that is, do they always? Stout seems to vacil- 



NOTES TO LECTURE II 227 

late between the answers Yes and No. I cannot make 
the passages consistent. 

(2) I think, however, that I can see a reason for 
inconsistency. Cognition, as functionless modification 
of consciousness, becomes sentience. Is there, now, any- 
thing that stands to feeling and striving as sentience 
stands to knowing? "In a merely anoetic experience 
. . . the mere experience of struggle or effort, activity 
free or impeded, may still remain" (A. P., 113). There 
is "conation in some form or degree," some amount of 
felt mental activity, even when "in a state of delicious 
languor I enjoy the organic sensations produced by a 
warm bath" (A. P., 160 f., 170 ff. ; Manual, 67 f.)- 
We have, then, an objectless (or practically objectless) 
conation or striving. So with feeling. "Agreeable and 
disagreeable experiences may exist apart from objec- 
tive reference. My consciousness may be agreeably toned 
by organic sensations of which I take no note" (A, P., 
113); "the presumption appears to be that our total 
consciousness is never [i.e., whether noetic or anoetic] 
entirely neutral" (Manual, 62). We have an objectless 
(or practically objectless) feeling. 

Very well! But the basis of Stout's classification of 
mental phenomena is "the ways in which our conscious- 
ness is related to its object" (Manual, 56), "the ulti- 
mately distinct modes of being conscious of an object" 
(Groundwork, 18), "the attitude or posture of conscious- 
ness towards objects" (A. P., 40 ff.). If, then, he ad- 
mits a pure sentience, a wholly objectless feeling, a wholly 
objectless conation, he is in a dilemma: either these three 
modes of mental function are one and indistinguishable, 
a matrix of experience lying behind and beyond the 



228 NOTES TO LECTURE II 

possibility of classification; or, the three modes being 
already distinguishable, his principle of classification 
breaks down. Stout is led (I imagine, by his own in- 
trospection) to recognise the objectless sentience of the 
conscious margin and the objectless character of much 
feeling-experience, and is also bound by his doctrine 
of mental activity to read a conative factor into every 
sort and kind of consciousness. Now the difference in 
feeling and conation, as between the noetic and the 
anoetic consciousnesses, is obviously a difference only of 
degree ; feeling is still recognisable in anoesis as feeling, 
conation as conation ; we are, in so far, upon the second 
horn of the dilemma. Rather than give up his principle 
of classification, however, Stout qualifies his account of 
anoetic experience: consciousness "usually and per- 
haps always" refers to an object; the modifications of 
the marginal consciousness are not utilised "to the full 
extent," but nevertheless "may mediate an indeterminate 
awareness": — passages of this nature, which save the 
principle, alternate with the passages which make 
thought and sentience "fundamentally distinct," and 
regard the marginal objects as "in no way developed in 
consciousness." 

The inconsistency, therefore, appears to be due, 
roughly, to the conflict between introspection (rein- 
forced by the doctrine of conation) and preconceived 
ideas of the nature and function of consciousness. I 
cannot accept Stout's doctrine of mental activity. But 
the introspective testimony to sentience and objectless 
feeling seems to me to invalidate the principle of ob- 
jective reference. 



NOTES TO LECTURE II 229 

(3) The principle itself has led, in Stout's hands, 
to varying results. Thus, in the A. P., we have: 

I. Cognition 

a. Sentience 

6. Simple apprehension 

c. Belief or judgment 

These "three fundamental modes of consciousness" 
are "combined in every complete cognitive act as in- 
tegral constituents of it" (115). We have already 
discussed the possibility of a purely objectless sentience. 

II. Volition 

a. Feeling 

b. Conation. 

"Every mental attitude which partakes of the nature 
of volition includes two fundamentally distinct modes 
of reference to an object, — (1) being pleased or dis- 
pleased with it or with its absence, and (2) striving 
after it or striving to avoid it, — desire or aversion" 
(115 f.). 

In the Manual we find (56 ff.): 

I. Ultimate modes of being conscious of an object 

a. Cognitive attitude or knowing 

b. Feeling-attitude or feeling 

c. Conative attitude or striving 

II. Experience not at the moment contributing to the cognitive 
function of consciousness 

d. Sentience or Sub-Consciousness. 

Finally, we have in the Groundwork (19) the schema: 
Cognition Interest 



Simple Apprehension Judgment Conation Feeling-attitude 

Sentience is not named; it appears only as a form of 
relative inattention (54 f.). 

It may be freely admitted that a classification is, 



230 NOTES TO LECTURE II 

primarily, a matter of convenience, and that a satis- 
factory classification of mental phenomena, on any 
principle, is not easy. It is again clear, however, that 
'reference to an object' is not an unerring or unequiv- 
ocal guide to grouping. 

27 Analyt. Psych., i., 41, 46. 

28 Grundlinien d. Psych., S ; cf. 5 f. 

29 Ibid., 12. 

30 So I understand the passages in A. P., 40 ff., 46 f., 
58 ff., 61 ff.; Manual, 56 ff., 122 ff. Thus, sensation 
is distinguished from image, not by any difference in 
act, but by "peculiar intensity, steadiness, and other 
distinctive characters" (Manual, 119), i.e., by attri- 
butes of the total mental process. Or again, sentience 
passes into thought, not by the supervention of an act 
of apprehension upon a bare content, but by a gradual 
process of transfusion, one of whose "most prominent 
forms is the progress in delicacy of discrimination" (A. 
P., 58); the total mental process is transformed in the 
passage. Difficulty arises, I think, only if we take 
Stout to recognise the occasional existence of a wholly 
functionless sentience, or a wholly objectless feeling and 
striving. 

31 Buhler, 354 f. 

32 Op. cit. 9 S f . Cf . 5 : "mit dem Erleben einer psy- 
chischen Tatsache ist uns in zweifachem Sinne etwas 
'gegeben 5 : direkt und unmittelbar die psychische Tat- 
sache selbst, mittelbar und in iibertragenem Sinne, eben 
das, worauf sie gerichtet ist" ; and 6 : "unser Vorstellen 
ist so beschaffen, dass es uns Dinge zur Vorstellung 
bringt." This transitive character is apparent to a direct 
observation of mental phenomena themselves, i.e. 9 to 



NOTES TO LECTURE II 231 

introspection; direct observation of physical phenom- 
ena, inspection, reveals nothing of the sort (4). 

I take Buhler and Witasek as typical representatives, 
in a professedly psychological context, of the opposing 
views with regard to mental transcendence ; I am, how- 
ever, not further concerned with that function, consid- 
ered either psychologically or epistemologically. The 
interested reader may refer to a series of papers by F. 
J. E. Woodbridge, in Congress of Arts and Science, i., 
1905 ; Studies in Philosophy and Psychology (Garman 
Commemorative Volume), 1906; Essays Philosophical 
and Psychological (in honour of W. James), 1908; 
Journ. Philos. Psych. Set. Meth., ii., 1905 ; to articles 
by other hands in the same Journ.; and to the papers by 
R. B. Perry, F. Arnold, S. S. Colvin and others in 
recent volumes of the Psych. Review. The annual bibli- 
ographies will supply further references. 

33 Stout, Analyt. Psych. , i., 49 ; Manual, 70. 

34 See references in Note 14 above. Cf. also The 
Senses and the Intellect, 1868, 364 ff. ; The Emotions 
and the Will, 1880, 574 ff. 

35 See Note 26 above. 

36 Ueber die Objectivirung und Subjectivirung von 
Sinneseindriicken, Philos. Studien, xix., 1902, 508 ff. 
Similar results, mentioned in my Text-book, 1909, §61, 
will shortly be published in the Amer. Journ. Psych, by 
M. C. West. 

37 Messer, 69. 
ss Op. cit., 116. 

39 Op. cit., 4. 

40 ii., 1902, 250 f. 

41 G. H. T. Eimer, On Orthogenesis, 1898, 2, 22, 21 ; 



232 NOTES TO LECTURE II 

the address was delivered in 1895. See also Organic 
Evolution as the Result of the Inheritance of Acquired 
Characters according to the Laws of Organic Growth, 
1890, Appendix, 431: "[my] conclusion . . . recog- 
nises a perfectly definite direction in the evolution and 
continuous modification of organisms, which even down 
to the smallest detail is prescribed by the material com- 
position (constitution) of the body" (from an address 
delivered in 1883); and 4, 20, etc., etc. 

42 ii., 251. 

43 Witasek terms the relation an "inneres Bezogensein, 
Gerichtetsein, Hinweisen auf ein anderes" {op. cit., 4). 

44 Perhaps I am unduly afraid of a word. Huxley, 
who wrote in 1864 that "that which struck the present 
writer most forcibly on his first perusal of the 'Origin of 
Species' was the conviction that Teleology, as commonly 
understood, had received its deathblow at Mr. Darwin's 
hands" (Criticisms on "The Origin of Species," in Lay 
Sermons , Addresses and Reviews, 1887, 261 f.) — that 
same Huxley wrote in 1869 that "there is a wider Tele- 
ology, which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, 
but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition 
of Evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, 
living and not living, is the result of the mutual interac- 
tion, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by 
the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the uni- 
verse was composed" (The Genealogy of Animals, in 
Critiques and Addresses, 1883, 305). I suppose that 
this 'wider teleology' . is, at bottom, identical with what 
I have called organisation. Jodl, again, commenting 
upon the sentence: "es besteht ein teleologischer Zu- 
sammenhang zwischen Vermogen und Reiz" (Lehrbuch, 



NOTES TO LECTURE II 233 

1896, 185), writes: "der Sinn dieses Ausdruckes kann 
auf dem Boden unserer heutigen Weltanschauung nicht 
zweifelhaft sein, welche die Teleologie nur als Ergebniss 
des gesetzmassigen Zusammenwirkens der Naturkrafte, 
der Anpassung vorhandener Formen und Combinationen 
an die umgebenden Medien, der Umbildung des Beste- 
henden durch die Summation kleinster Wirkungen und 
durch die Auslese der giinstigen, den Bestand und die 
Leistung einer Combination sichernden, Abanderungen 
erklart. Die empfindenden Organe sind nicht von irgend 
einer zwecksetzenden Thatigkeit zur Aufnahme be- 
stimmter Reize eingerichtet ; ... die Welt der physi- 
kalisch-chemischen Reize hat sich durch fortgesetzte 
Einwirkung auf das Protoplasma im Zusammenhang 
der organischen Entwicklung die Organe, welche diesen 
Reizen entsprechen und eine Abbildung derselben ermog- 
lichen, selbst geschaffen."* I suppose that, in principle, 
this view of teleology is also very like my own view of 
organisation. Nevertheless, I have a rooted temper- 
amental aversion to the word teleology and to its 
idea, — a constitutional fear of "mistaking the mere tick- 
ing of the clock for its function." I have, similarly, an 
aversion to the term 'concept,' a constitutional fear 
of hypostatising a mental construction. There is, per- 
haps, some connection between these temperamental 
reactions and the habit of thinking in visual schemata, 
described in Lecture I. 

45 Op. cit., 4. 

46 We are all too apt to speak of the 'physical organ- 

* The sentences immediately following this quotation are modi- 
fied in i., 1903, 219; and in both editions the initial statements are 
qualified by a reference to "die Spontaneitat des Bewusstseins." 



234 NOTES TO LECTURE II 

ism, 5 as if a human being were, as organism, complete 
without mind; and then we are all too apt to parallel 
the physical by a 'psychical organism,' as if there were 
a perfect mental organisation apart from body. I have 
argued against the latter view in Text-book, 1909, §9. 
Cf . F. Jodl, Lehrbuch d. Psych., 1896, 84 fF. ; J. M. 
Baldwin, Mind and Body from the Genetic Point of 
View, Psych. Review, x., 1903, 242 if. 



NOTES TO LECTURE III 

1 W. Wundt, Ueber Ausf rageexperimente und iiber 
die Methoden zur Psychologie des Denkens, Psychol. 
Studien, iii., 1907, 334; cf. the account of the method, 
302 ff., and ct. esp. Ach,* 21, 27 f. Buhler replies in an 
Antwort auf die von W. Wundt erhobenen Einwande 
gegen die Methode der Selbstbeobachtung an experi- 
mentell erzeugten Erlebnissen, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., 
xii., 1908, 93 ff. It will be observed that the title of 
this rejoinder neatly begs the whole question. Wundt 
returns to the fray in Kritische Nachlese zur Ausfrage- 
methode, ibid., xi., 1908, 445 ff. (issued later than the 
first part of vol. xii.). Buhler defends himself, briefly, 
in Zur Kritik der Denkexperimente, Zeits. f. Psych., li., 
1909, 108 f. 

Marbe, who in his Beitrage zur Logik und ihren 
Grenzwissenschaften (Vjs. f. wiss. Philos. u. Soziol., 
xxx., 1906, 465 ff.) had already protested against 
Wundt's comments in the Physiol. Psych. , iii., 1903, 
579 ff., also takes a hand in the present controversy: 
W. Wundts Stellung zu meiner Theorie der stroboskop- 
ischen Erscheinungen und zur systematischen Selbst- 
wahrnehmung, Zeits. f. Psych., xlvi., 1908, 352 ff. 
Wundt barely notices his strictures in the Kritische 
Nachlese, 445. The discussion, throughout, strikes the 
disinterested observer as too warm for either comfort or 
dignity. 

2 Marbe, 15. 3 Ibid., 9 f . 4 Ibid., 16. 

*See below, Note 13. 

235 



236 NOTES TO LECTURE III 

5 Marbe made two principal series of experiments. 
The first is aimed at the psychology of Urteilsvorstel- 
lungen, Urteilsgebarden, Urteilsworte, Urteilssatze (15 
ff.), the second at that of the Verstehen und Beurteilen 
der Urteile (ideas, gestures, words and phrases, proposi- 
tions: 58 ff.). It is not necessary here to treat the 
series separately. 

6 Binet, 10. 7 Ibid., 2, 9, 301. 
8 Ibid., 21 f . 9 Ibid., 306 ff. 

10 "Les recherches que j'ai pu faire sur ces deux 
enfants . . . se sont espacees sur trois ans. Elles s'y 
ont pretees avec beaucoup de bonne grace, sans timidite, 
ni fou rire; elles ont tou jours compris qu'il s'agissait 
d'une chose serieuse, et elles etaient persuadees que la 
moindre erreur pouvait me causer un prejudice des 
plus graves. Plut au ciel que les adultes qui servent 
de sujets aux psychologues eussent tou jours une attitude 
aussi bonne!" Ibid., 10. Cf. 51, 82, 167, 308. 

11 Watt, 289 f . Cf . F. Schumann, Bericht uber d. I. 
Kongress f. exper. Psych., 1904, 124. 

12 Ibid., 316 f . 

13 N. Ach, Ueber die Willenstatigkeit und das Deriken : 
eine experimentelle Untersuchung mit einem Anhange 
uber das Hippsche Chronoshop^ 1905. Ach's experi- 
mental work was begun in 1900, and a first draught of 
his results was submitted to the Gottingen faculty as 
Habilitationsschrift in 1902, but apparently was not 
published. A brief abstract, printed in Schumann, 
Bericht, etc., 80 ff., mentions the method of "syste- 
matische experimentelle Selbstbeobachtung." The ex- 
pression is, I think, needlessly clumsy, since an 

* Cited, in the following Notes, as 'Ach.' 



NOTES TO LECTURE III 237 

experimental procedure is ex vi definitionis & systematic 
procedure. 

14 Ach, 8 ff. I have no quarrel with Ach on the score 
of fact ; but I must dissent from his theory of introspec- 
tion. "Dass die Selbstbeobachtung auf das Erlebnis, 
so lange dasselbe sich nicht ofters wiederholt hat, einen 
storenden Einfluss ausubt, davon konnte ich mich bei 
meinen Untersuchungen vielfach uberzeugen. Dass das 
Erlebnis wahrend seines Gegebenseins in der Regel nicht 
beobachtet werden kann, hat seinen Grund darin, dass 
sich . . . determinierende Tendenzen [see Note 49 be- 
low] verschiedenen Inhaltes, die sich auf dasselbe Er- 
lebnis beziehen, gegenseitig ausschliessen. Die Deter- 
minierung kann nur in einer bestimmten Richtung 
erfolgen. Diese Richtung ist aber durch den Verlauf 
des Erlebnisses selbst gegeben. Es kann also wahrend 
des Erlebens nicht noch eine weitere Determinierung z. 
B. eine Selbstbeobachtung stattfinden, die eine andere 
Richtung der Aufmerksamkeit — eine Richtung wie sie 
durch das Verhalten des Subjektes zum Objekt char- 
akterisiert ist — in sich schliesst" (9 f.). But why drag 
in subject and object? The fact is, simply, that when 
an experience is in progress you cannot (unless the 
experience moves very slowly, or is very habitual, or 
you yourself are very highly practised) take note of 
it, find forms of verbal expression for it, report upon 
it ; the experience will not wait for you. And what holds 
of inner holds under like conditions, in precisely the 
same way, of outer experience; there are many observa- 
tions in microscopy, in natural history, that you cannot 
report, by words or by drawings, while they are in 
course; all that you can do is to live them attentively, 



238 NOTES TO LECTURE III 

and then recover them in the memory after-image. 
The introspective determination is twofold; you are to 
attend and you are to report. But then the inspective 
determination, the instruction given for observation in 
natural science, is also twofold; you are to attend and 
you are to report. There is absolutely no difference in 
principle between introspection and inspection; whether 
you are able to attend and to report simultaneously (or, 
rather, while the observation is going on) depends, in 
both cases, upon the circumstances of the moment. I 
have tried to make the point clear in my Feeling and 
Attention, 1908, 174 ff. ; Text-book, 1909, §6. Storring, 
in his Vorlesungen uber Psychopathologie (1900, 5 ff. ; 
Eng., 1907, 3 ff.), takes practically the same ground, 
although he does not distinguish between attention and 
report; and Meumann (Exper. Padagogik, i., 1907, 14) 
expresses agreement with Storring. Nevertheless, in 
Germany the Kantian tradition dies hard; and in our 
own psychology John Mill's reply to Comte (James, 
Princ.y i., 188 f.), while it saved the situation on the 
practical side, naturally tended to overemphasize the 
part played by memory or 'reflection.' 

I agree with Ach that introspection of the thought- 
processes is extremely difficult (16 f., 41, 215), and I do 
not question the advantage of his method (19 f.).* But 
I contend that the disturbances ascribed to Selbstbeo- 
bachtung (22, 37) are not intrinsic to introspection. 
They are due to the observer's effort, in a case where 
experience is both complex and fleeting, to take full 
mental notes, as he goes along, without losing the 

*Cf. Messer, 15 f.; Storring, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xi., 1908, 
39 f . 



NOTES TO LECTURE III 239 

experience itself, — to translate adequately into words, 
for subsequent report, a consciousness that is moving, 
changing, with great rapidity, and that will not stand 
still to be described. Given a simpler experience, a 
slower movement of consciousness, and it would be 
altogether possible for report to keep even pace with 
attention. 

The fact of disturbance is attested by Messer (20): 
"kommt es . . . zu einer eigentlichen Selbstbeobachtung 
wahrend des Erlebnisses, so wirkt diese storend" (cf. 
Storring, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xi., 1908, 3, 92 ; ibid., 
xiv., 1909, 1 f.). Yet one of Messer's observers writes: 
"bei den Aussagen wird das Erlebte nicht immer re- 
produziert, aber es kommt vielfach dazu. Eigentiimlich 
ist dies: wo derartige Aussagen sich nicht mit dem 
Erlebten bereit gestellt haben, da wissen wir nichts 
da von" (16). Messer himself generalises this remark 
(21), and refers the 'Bereitschaft der Aussagen' to the 
'Wirksamkeit der Aufgabe, Protokoll zu geben.' It is, 
indeed, generally acknowledged that introspection is 
advantaged by the purpose to introspect (Messer, 20 f . ; 
Binet, 92; Ach, 11, 19). I cannot but think that the 
getting ready of the verbal expression is a mental note- 
taking, of a simple and schematic sort, and that in his 
account of it Messer has really furnished an argument 
against his own and Ach's position. 

15 The term is Woodworth's : Journ. Philos. Psych. 
Set. Meth., iv., 1907, 170. 

16 Ach, 11 ; Fechner, Elem. d. Psychophysik, ii., xliv., 
b (1860, 1889, 491 ff.). Miiller and Pilzecker {Exper. 
Beitrage zur Lehre vom Gedachtniss, 1900, 58 f . ) refer 
only to Fechner's "Phantome des sogennanten Sinnen- 



240 NOTES TO LECTURE III 

gedachtnisses" (498 ff.), which they name "Wider- 
holungsempfindungen." There seems, however, to be 
no reason why Fechner's term 'memory after-image' 
should not cover Ach's phenomena of perseveration. 

For a general account of the part played in recent 
work by the 'perseverative tendencies, 5 see Watt, Arch, 
f. d. ges. Psych., vii., 1906, Literaturbericht, 17 ff. ; 
and cf. Watt, 341 ff.; Messer, 17, 20, 63, 66; Wresch- 
ner, 11 ff., 237 ff. 

17 Ach, 17 f . ; Diirr, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 327. 

18 Grundriss d. Psych., 421 ; Outlines, 1909, 407. 

19 See Philos. Studien, x., 1894, 498; Logik, ii., 2, 
1895, 226; Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 305, 383, 452. 

20 Messer, 4, 22 ff., 108 f. The use of free associa- 
tions had been criticised by Watt, 296 ff., on the ground 
that the results would be indefinite, and the discrimina- 
tion of factors and influences difficult or impossible. 
Watt's objection that "es scheint kaum moglich, einen 
Bewi^stseinszustand vorzubereiten, in dem jedes Richten 
der Aufmerksamkeit auf irgend etwas unterdruckt wird" 
is, however, transformed by Messer into a merit of the 
method: "[es ist] sehr haufig zu konstatieren, dass sich 
die Vp. . . . unwillkiirlich eine speziellere Aufgabe 
stellten, — was methodisch recht beachtenswert ist." Cf. 
Binet, 54 f . ; Ach's account of determinate abstraction 
(successive form), 240 ff . ; P. Bovet, Arch, de psych., 
viii., 1908, 14, 19; Wreschner, 125 ff., 145, 480, 491; 
E. Meumann, Vorlesungen z. Einfilhrung in d. exper. 
Pddagogih, i., 1907, 213. 

This specialisation of the Aufgabe may be brought 
into connection with the specialisation of verbal mean- 
ing. "[Es] findet unter Umstanden eine Prazisierung, 



NOTES TO LECTURE III 241 

eine Einschrankung des Sinnes [des Reizwortes] statt, 
die weder durch das Reizwort, noch etwa durch die 
Aufgabe bedingt ist, sondern sich wohl aus dem in der 
allgemeinen Konstellation begriindeten Vorherrschen 
bestimmter Reproduktionstendenzen erklart" (Messer, 
81 f.; cf. Wreschner, 148 ff., 480). It seems also to 
be related to the specialisation of the visual image which 
accompanies and partly expresses a thought: Binet, 
85 f . ; Watt, 369 ; Messer, 88 ; Wreschner, 180 ff. At 
any rate, this phenomenon of specialisation, of partial 
expression, is to be distinguished from the occurrence 
of incongruous or wholly irrelevant visual images. 

I have on occasion been tempted to think, further, 
that these various types of specialisation — possibly the 
various phases of the psychology of Aufgabe at large — 
have something to do with Royce's problem of the 'in- 
hibitory consciousness' (Recent Logical Inquiries and 
their Psychological Bearings, Psychol. Review, ix., 1902, 
131, 133 ff.). Royce, however, assumes that our 
"motor acts," our "positive tendencies and inhibitions" 
must, in "live thinking," come to consciousness; "our 
abstract ideas are products of ... an organised union 
of negative and positive tendencies" ; and we can under- 
stand the psychology of thinking "only in case we un- 
derstand when, how far, and under what conditions, 
inhibition becomes a conscious process." The psychology 
of Aufgabe has tended rather to emphasise the uncon- 
scious direction and determination of consciousness. I 
make the suggestion for what it is worth; I am not at 
all sure that I have understood Royce. 
• 21 Ibid., 4 ff. On "begriffliches und gegenstandliches 
Denken," see esp. 148 ff. The distinction is criticised by 
16 



242 NOTES TO LECTURE III 

Buhler, Remarques sur les problemes de la psychologie 
de la pensee, Archives de Psych., vi., 1907, 383 f . ; de- 
fended by Messer, Bemerkungen zu meinen 'Experi- 
mentell-psychologischen Untersuchungen iiber das Den- 
ken/ Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., x., 1907, 419 ff. ; and 
relegated by Buhler to epistemology, Ueber Gedanken- 
zusammenhange, ibid., xii., 1908, 12. Bovet (Arch, de 
Psych., viii., 1908, 29) ascribes it to individual differ- 
ence; von Aster (Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 97, 
100 f.) thinks that 'begriffliches Denken' is a matter of 
direct impression ('Uebergangserlebnis': see Lecture IV., 
Note 66) and that 'gegenstandliches Denken' involves 
the comparison of attitudes or images. Wreschner has 
a new distinction, that of 'Vorstellungen schlechthin' 
and of 'Zentral erregte Empfindungen' (6 f.)* 

22 A statement of this sort can rest on nothing more 
tangible than general impression. Watt's paper seems 
to me to bear all the marks of an unitary conception. 
Ach's work is admittedly incomplete (v.) and the "und 
das Denken" of the title is an afterthought (vi.) ; but the 
work itself is organic, and the inclusion of thought 
is logically sanctioned by the whole trend of the 
investigation. 

Buhler writes (Archives, 377): "Messer a interprets 
[son] materiel en logicien. . . . Cela fait paraitre, d'un 
cote, ses recherches tres etendues. . . . Mais d'un autre 
cote 9a leur donne un certain air d'incoherence, car les 
resultats obtenus ne sont pas plus rattaches entre eux 
que les questions auxquelles ils doivent repondre." Cf. 
386, and Buhler, 303. 

23 Messer, 12; so Buhler, 308. 24 Buhler, 300 ff. 
25 Ibid., 306, 309. Cf. Binet, 300 f. 26 Ibid., 305. 



NOTES TO LECTURE III 243 

27 R. S. Woodworth, Imageless Thought, Journ. 
Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iii., 1906, 703 f. 

28 Ueber Gedankenerinnerungen, Arch. f. d. ges. 
Psych., xii., 1908, 24 ff. On the method of right asso- 
ciates, see G. E. Miiller and A. Pilzecker, Exper. 
Beitrage zur Lehre vom Gedachtniss, 1900. 

29 Wundt, Psych. Studien, iii., 1907, 305 ; Diirr, Zeits. 
f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 330. 

30 G. Storring, Experimentelle Ulntersuchungen iiber 
einfache Schlussprozesse, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xi., 

1908, 1 ff. The illustrations occur on pp. 7, 126. See 
also Experimentelle und psychopathologische Untersuch- 
ungen iiber das Bewusstsein der Giiltigkeit, ibid., xiv., 

1909, 1 ff. 

31 Woodworth, The Consciousness of Relation, in 
Essays Philosophical and Psychological, 1908, 489 ff. 

32 There is a certain fatality about these dates. Ach, 
publishing in 1905, brings his references only "bis zum 
Jahre 1904" (vi.); Watt's dissertation, published in 
the Archiv for January, 1905, was current in separate 
form late in 1904, and is dated 1904. Messer's manu- 
script went to the printer in May, 1906; but he says 
that Ach's book "wurde mir erst bekannt als die Ver- 
arbeitung meines Materials schon fast ganz beendet 
war" (11) — too late, therefore, to influence his per- 
spective; Ach's work is referred to only in foot-notes. 
Wreschner, again, performed his experiments in the 
years 1900-1903 (Wreschner, 21). 

B3 Analyt. Psych., i., 85 f. Cf. Manual 394 ff.; 
248 ff. ; Groundwork, 104 ff. 



244 NOTES TO LECTURE III 

34 J, R. Angell, Thought and Imagery, Philos. Rev., 
vi„ 1897, 648 f. Cf. ibid., 534 f. 

35 Ibid., vii„ 1898, 74 f . 

36 A. Mayer und J. Orth, Zur qualltativen Un- 
tersuchung der Association. Zeits. f. Psych, u. Physiol, 
d. Sinnesorg., xxvi., 1901, 1 ff., esp. 5 f. 

37 1 give some illustrative references to Marbe's work. 
The observers were Kulpe, Mayer, Orth, Pfister and 
Roetteken. Doubt, K p. 18, O p. 88 ; uneasiness, R 38 ; 
difficulty, K 21 ; uncertainty, R 30 ; effort, R 27 ; hesi- 
tation, K 29 ; vacillation, R 18 ; incapacity, M 81 ; 
ignorance, K 65 ; certainty, R 30 ; assent, O 87, M 88 ; 
conviction of right or wrong judgment, R 18, R 36, 
K 39. 

Surprise appears as emotion, K 70, 71, and as 
Bewusstseinslage, O 87 ; wonder as emotion, K 79, M 80 ; 
astonishment, R 85; expectation, K 71, K 79, O 81 (as 
Bewusstseinslage, K 65 ) ; curiosity, O 80. 

Remembrance of instructions, R 18; of answering in 
sentences, K 37 ; of past conversations, P 87 ; nonsense 
has come before, O 88 ; sense or nonsense is coming, 
O 88, 89; division leaves no remainder, K 35. Cf. also 
unnaturalness of form of answer, K 37 ; must compare, 
K 60 ; must calculate, K 79 ; that is too big, K 66 ; that 
is wrong, R 66 ; is it winter now ? M 80 ; range of mean- 
ing of word lock (of hair), P 87. 

The Bewusstseinslagen are reported sometimes with, 
sometimes without an affective concomitant: see, e.g., 
the reports of R and P, 85-87. Associative arousal, K 
23 ; part played in associative consciousness, R 24 ; at- 
tended to, R 24; forgotten, R 31. 



NOTES TO LECTURE III 245 

Indefinite or indescribable forms, e.g., K 35, R 74, 
P 85, 86. 

38 H. Hoffding, Psych, in Umrissen, 1887, 152 f . ; 
1893, 163: Ueber Wiederkennen, etc., Vjs. f. wiss. 
Philos., xiii., 1889, 427: Zur Theorie des Wiedererken- 
nens, Philos. Studien, viii., 1893, 94. Cf. W. Wundt, 
ibid., vii., 1892, 33; Physiol Psych., in., 1903, 536; 
Ach, 236. 

Ach refers also to J. Volkelt's Erinnerungsgewissheit: 
Beitrage zur Analyse des Bewusstseins, Zeits. f. Philos. 
u. philos. Kritik, cxviii. (1), 1 ff. In a characteristic 
review of this article (Zeits. f. Psych, u. Physiol, d. 
Sinnesorg., xxix., 1902, 142 ff.), Witasek remarks: 
"Bei manchem der Ergebnisse hat man furs Erste frei- 
lich den Eindruck, dass es weniger aus den Thatsachen 
herausanalysirt als vielmehr in diese hineindeducirt ist," 
and transforms Volkelt's 'Gewissheit' into 'Evidenz des 
Urtheils,' — Evidenz meaning 'psychisch-actuelle Ueber- 
zeugungs-Berechtigung.' Cf. the account of Witasek's 
psychology of judgment in Lecture II. above. 

Ach mentions, further, F. Schumann's 'Nebenein- 
drlicke der Spannung der Ewartung' and 'der Ueber- 
raschung' (Zeits. f. Psych, u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorg., 
iv., 1892, 2, etc.), and the 'absolute impression' of the 
metric methods of psychophysics (L. J. Martin u. G. 
E. Miiller, Zur Analyse d. Unterschiedsempfindlichkeit, 
1899, 43). 

39 See, e.g., Physiol. Psych., ii., 1893, 501, 521 ; iii., 
1903, 121 f., 625. I suppose that neither Orth's nor 
Ach's list of references is meant to be more than sug- 
gestive. It would be easy to add others ; but I doubt 
if anything is to be gained by bracketing together a 



246 NOTES TO LECTURE III 

number of experiences which obviously await analysis, 
and which are very differently placed in different systems. 

40 J. Orth, Gefuhl und Bewusstseinslage, eine hritisch- 
experimentelle Studie, 1903, esp. 69-75, 130. I am not 
able to gather anything new from Orth's tables. Cf. 
Ach, 238 f., and ct. von Aster, Zeits. f. Psych,, xlix., 
1908, 104 ff. 

41 Ach, 210, 215, 238. On previous use of the term 
Bewusstheit, see note, 239. 

42 Ibid., 11, 211. The Bewusstheit may be attended 
to, as if it were a Wahrnehmungsinhalt; 211, 214. 

* z Ibid., 213. 
44 /bid., 217 f. 

^Ibid., 96 f., 212 f., 219. Cf. the discussion of 
contributory factors, 220. 

46 Ibid., 230, 235. 

47 Ibid., 232, 235. Cf . Watt, 368 f . ; E. Claparede, 
Uassociation des idees, 1903, 228 ff. 

48 Ibid., 235 ff. 

49 The 'determining tendencies 5 are placed by Ach 
alongside of the perseverative and associative tenden- 
cies to reproduction (187, 195, 247), and are defined 
as follows (187): "Unter den determinierenden Ten- 
denzen sind Wirkungen zu verstehen, welche von einem 
eigenartigen Vorstellungsinhalte der Zielvorstellung aus- 
gehen und eine Determinierung im Sinne oder gemass 
der Bedeutung dieser Zielvorstellung nach sich ziehen." 
Cf. 224 f. : "Es ist . . . die Regel, dass die wirksame 
Zielvorstellung beim Auftreten der konkreten Bezugs- 
vorstellung als solche nicht im Bewusstsein erscheint, aber 
trotzdem einen bestimmenden Einfluss ausiibt. In dieser 
eigentiimlichen Wirksamkeit sehen wir neben den f riiher 



NOTES TO LECTURE III 247 

angegebenen Merkmalen ein charakteristisches Zeichen 
fiir die Determinierung, und diese eigenartigen von der 
Zielvorstellung ausgehenden, sich auf die Bezugsvors- 
tellung beziehenden Wirkungen bezeichnen wir als die 
determinierenden Tendenzen." Or again (228) : "[Die] 
im Unbewussten wirkenden, von der Bedeutung der 
Zielvorstellung ausgehenden, auf die kommende Bezugs- 
vorstellung gerichteten Einstellungen, welche ein spon- 
tanes Auftreten der determinierten Vorstellung nach 
sich ziehen, bezeichnen wir als determinierende Tenden- 
zen." The effects of these tendencies are described 196, 
209 f., 222, 234. 

50 Messer, 184. 51 Ibid., 180. 

52 Ibid., 180 f . 53 Ibid., 181 ff . 

54 Ibid., 184 ff., 188. Messer's terms are Gedanken 
and Begriffe. The latter are "die Bsl von der Bedeu- 
tung einzelner Worte oder Phrasen." 

55 Ibid., 187. 56 Ibid., 84. 

57 Ach, 219. 58 Messer, 51. Cf. 188 ff. 

59 Ibid., 71 f ., 83, 85. 

60 C. L. Taylor (Ueber das Verstehen von Worten und 
Satzen, Zeits. f. Psych., xl., 1905, 225 ff.) notes that 
both the imaginal representation of meaning and the 
attitude of 'understanding' tend to lapse as a printed 
text becomes familiar (241, 246). More to our present 
point, however, is the fact that an observer, who finds 
visual ideas essential (229) or at any rate useful (235) 
in the solution of a given problem, drops these ideas and 
employs simply 'thoughts' and attitudes in the solution 
of further problems of the same kind (236). It would 
be overhasty to suppose that the visual ideas formed, in 
these cases, the sole psychological representatives of 



248 NOTES TO LECTURE III 

logical meaning ; that state of affairs is possible, but not 
probable. Hence we may not either infer that the 
attitudes and the attitudinal constituents of the thoughts 
(these are described as "kompliziertere Gefiige von 
Bewusstseinslagen und Wortvorstellungen" : 235) are 
vestigial derivatives of visual imagery ; they might also 
derive, e.g., from kinesthetic complexes that had en- 
tered, along with the visual ideas, into the representa- 
tion of meaning. In any event, the change from 
imagery to attitude, within the individual mind, appears 
to proceed rather by way of substitution and short cut 
than by way of gradual reduction, — though there may, 
doubtless, be individual differences (cf. Stout, Analytic 
Psych., i., 83 f.). The point is taken up in Lecture V. 

It is a fortunate chance that my colleague, Dr. L. R. 
Geissler, has — like Ach (216) — "eine ausgesprochene 
Veranlagung in Bewusstheiten zu denken," so that we 
may hope presently to throw some light upon the prob- 
lem set in the text. So far, I can report only that the 
assimilation of a new idea, or the understanding of a 
novel term, is for Dr. Geissler a definitely imaginal ex- 
perience, but that with growing familiarity the images 
very quickly lapse, and are replaced by an awareness 
which (though we have as yet had no opportunity to at- 
tempt its complete analysis) appears to be predominantly 
kinesthetic in composition. 

61 Binet, 82. 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

1 References are given in Notes ii., viii., pp. 239, 246, 
of Veitch's translation of The Meditations, and Selec- 
tions from the Principles, of Rene Descartes, reprint of 
1901. Add Med., iii., p. 45. The letters here quoted 
will be found in CEuvres, ed. C. Adam et P. Tannery, 
iii., 1899, 395, 691 f. 

2 "Thought is impossible without an image," On 
Memory and Recollection, 449 b, sub fin. (W. A. 
Hammond, Aristotle's Psychology, 1902, 197. Cf. 6, 
106, 123). 

3 Marbe, 9 f ., 15, 44. The phrasing of this result is 
Marbe's. 

4 Ibid., 43. 5 Ibid., 90. 

6 Ibid., 52. 7 Ibid., 52 f . 

8 Ibid., 91. 

9 Ibid., 92. Messer seeks to effect a reconciliation 
between Ach and Marbe; the latter's 'Wissen 5 is "ledig- 
lich eine Disposition" (207). 

10 Ibid., 92. 

11 Ibid., 52 : "in den Protokollen unserer Versuche von 
einer derartigen Absicht nichts nachgewiesen wurde." 

12 Watt, 412. 

13 Ibid., 413. The influence of the Aufgabe is also 
plainly apparent in O. Kiilpe's Versuche (iber Abstrac- 
tion (Bericht iiber d. I. Kongress f. exper. Psych., 1904, 
56 ff.), published in the same year: cf. Watt, 426; 
Ach, 239 f . ; Storring, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xi., 1908, 
7 f. ; Wreschner, 493 f., etc.; E. Meumann, Ueber 

249 



250 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

Assoziationsexperimente mit Beeinflussung der Repro- 
duktionszeit, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., ix., 1907, 117 ff. 
(answered by Messer, ibid., x., 1907, 409 ff.)- For 
further references see Watt, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., vii., 
1906, Literaturbericht, 25 ff. 

14 Ibid., 413. 15 Ibid., 410. 

16 Marbe, 54 : "doch irgend welche Absichtlichkeit im 
Bewusstsein des Erlebenden nicht nachweisbar zu sein 
braucht." 

17 Watt, 346. 18 Ibid„ 416. 

19 Ibid., 300. Note the lapse into phenomenology, 
as soon as a mental formation is mentioned which the 
writer has not himself analysed ! "In einem Zustand der 
Erwartung, die von mehr oder weniger lebhaften Span- 
nungsempfindungen begleitet wird" — so the phrase runs. 
But why 'accompanied' ? May not the kinaesthesis be 
an integral constituent of the expectation ? Cf . a forth- 
coming paper on Expectation by W. H. Pyle, in the 
Amer. Journ. Psych. 

20 Messer, 7 f . Cf . 108 f ., 126, 208 f. 

21 Ibid., 109 f . It may be questioned whether this 
"Auf gabe, das Seiende zu erkennen" is not, in reality, 
of an instinctive nature ; — whether the Einstellwng which 
underlies it is not a matter of racial heritage. The 
psychophysical organism has, after all, been developed, 
throughout the course of evolution, in interaction with 
its natural environment. If this hypothesis is sound, 
the Auf gabe need never come to consciousness : not be- 
cause it is "ganz gewohnlich und selbstverstandlich" — 
for what is customary now must once have been novel 
and unaccustomed; but rather because instinctive atti- 
tudes are normally and intrinsically unconscious. 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV 251 

The Feeling of Reality. — There are, however, explicit 
'f eelings' of reality and unreality ; there are times when 
we say, quite naturally, 'How real it all was !' or 'The 
whole thing struck me as unreal.' What is the syste- 
matic position of these 'feelings'? 

Calkins {An Introd. to Psych., 1901 or 1905, 124 ff.) 
recognises 'feelings of realness' as a sub-group of the 
'attributive elements of consciousness.' The feeling of 
realness or consciousness of reality (126) can best be 
illustrated by a contrast of memory w T ith imagination ; 
there is an elementary experience, 'embedded' in the 
memory-image, which is utterly lacking to images of 
imagination. It resembles affection in that "it is al- 
ways realised as belonging to some element or complex 
of elements" and "is not always present" in consciousness. 
It has, however, no simple opposite, as pleasantness has 
an opposite in unpleasantness (113 ff.); for the "feel- 
ing of the not-real is evidently a composite of the con- 
sciousness of opposition [a probably elemental relational 
experience: 131] and the consciousness of reality" 
(126). Whether it evinces a qualitative variety we are 
not told; the section-heading speaks of 'the feelings,' 
the text of 'the feeling' of realness. 

In support of the elementary character of the feeling 
of realness, the writer appeals, first, to John Mill's note 
in Analysis, i., 1869, 412. Mill here raises the question 
"what is the difference to our minds between thinking of 
a reality, and representing to ourselves an imaginary 
picture," and decides that "the distinction is ultimate 
and primordial." The following discussion (413) is 
not very clear; but I do not find that Mill ascribes the 
difference to any feeling of realness that is 'embedded' 



252 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

in memory, or that may 'attach' to an image (Calkins, 
187) ; he seems rather to regard imagination and belief 
(memory or expectation) as coordinate mental func- 
tions, differing in what Brentano would term their 'act.' 
Later, however, he writes (423) that "there is in the 
remembrance of a real fact, as distinguished from that 
of a thought, an element" which is other than a differ- 
ence between ideas. This 'element,' then, might be con- 
sidered as a feeling of realness superadded upon or 
attached to mere imagination. But then Mill terms it 
belief: "this element, howsoever we define it, constitutes 
Belief": whereas Calkins defines belief as "an idea 
distinguished both by the feeling of realness and by the 
[relational] feeling of congruence" (305). James, too, 
identifies the 'sense of reality' with 'belief (Princ, ii., 
283 fF.). 

The reference to Baldwin's Handbook of Psych. : 
Feelmg and Will, 1891, 155, is erroneous. The feeling 
which there "cannot be explained, any more than any 
other feeling; it must be felt" is not the reality-feeling 
— which is discussed 148 fF. — but belief. Baldwin, of 
course, posits a reality-feeling. "Two different sorts 
of feeling may be denoted by the terms reality-feeling 
and belief. . . . To the mind of the writer this distinc- 
tion is a fundamental and vital one" (149). Calkins' 
feeling of realness is, however, not identical with Bald- 
win's reality-feeling. It is rather — as is shown by the 
instances given (C, 124; B., 152 f.), and by the fact 
that the reality-feeling is correlated with an equally 
simple and original unreality-feeling (B., 151) — a blend 
of Baldwin's reality-feeling and belief. 

But there is a wider difference between Calkins' posi- 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV 253 

tion and that of the three psychologists to whom she 
refers. I can best express it by using the terminology, 
- — which of late has been somewhat abused — of structure 
and function.* The feeling of realness is, for Calkins, 
an element of mental structure. Mill and James and 
Baldwin speak the language of function. How else 
could Baldwin write that "the feeling of reality is simply 
consciousness itself" (154), or James describe belief 
as "the psychic attitude in which our mind stands 
towards the proposition taken as a whole" (287)? We 
have, accordingly, to consider whether Calkins is justi- 
fied in ranking the feeling or feelings of reality among 
the "structural elements of consciousness" (17). 

I have already said that the existence of 'feelings of 
reality' is beyond question. We have them when we 

* James writes, in 1907: "We habitually hear much nowadays 
of the difference between structural and functional psychology. 
I am not sure that I understand the difference" (Philos. Rev., 
xvi., 1). And yet James coined the terms, so lately as 1884, and 
uses them in his Principles, so lately as 1890! "[There are] two 
aspects" he says, "in which all mental facts without exception 
may be taken; their structural aspect, as being subjective, and 
their functional aspect, as being cognitions. In the former aspect, 
the highest as well as the lowest is a feeling, a peculiarly tinged 
segment of the stream. This tingeing is its sensitive body, the 
wie ilftm zu Muthe 1st, the way it feels whilst passing. In the 
latter aspect, the lowest mental fact as well as the highest grasps 
some bit of universal truth as its content, even though that truth 
were as relationless as a bare unlocalised and undated quality of 
pain. From the cognitive point of view, all mental facts are 
intellections. From the subjective point of view all are feelings" 
(Mind, O. S., ix., 1884, 18 f.; Princ, i., 478). There are prob- 
ably a good many psychologists who would object to the identi- 
fication of mental function with the function of cognition; but 
apart from this — which is, after all, only an accident, due to the 
context in which James is writing — the distinction is perfectly 
clear and genuine. 



254 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

find that the brooch we have picked up is real gold, and 
the table we have spied in the second-hand store real 
mahogany ; we have them when, after ploughing through 
the introductory pages, we come to the real point of a 
scientific paper; we have them, in very uncanny form, 
if we happen to be alone in a room full of waxwork 
figures. We say — and feel — that Colonel Newcome and 
Mi*. Micawber, Becky Sharp and Dora, are more real 
than half the people of our acquaintance. We often 
get a particularly keen sense of the reality of the third 
dimension from perspective figures.* An unexpected 
meeting with a friend ; the express recognition of a half- 
heard sound as that of the fire alarm; the taking of a 
'day ofP ; the first hint of the possibilities of a theory : 
all these experiences, and a hundred others, give us the 
feeling of reality. And there are counter-feelings of 
unreality, over and above that special feeling of unreal- 
ity which comes in states of lassitude and fatigue, when 
the world of men and things is as shadowy and insub- 
stantial as the world of the Lotos-eaters. There are, 
indeed, as many feelings of reality and of unreality as 
there are distinguishable meanings of the words real 
and unreal. 

But elementary feelings ? elemental experiences ? 
Surely not : surely, on the contrary, a very heterogeneous 
group of complex formations, every one of which de- 
mands its own analysis. We have feelings of reality 
as we have feelings of utility, feelings of superiority, 
feelings of amity: as, in the sphere of the concrete, we 
have feelings of tables and chairs, horses and carts, 

* Wundt, Volkerpsychologie : My thus und Religion, ii., 1, 1905, 
44. 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV 255 

books and papers. If we are to classify mental processes 
as feelings 'of anything, we can multiply our elements 
ad infinitum.* But, for a psychology of structure, that 
'of w r hich we have the feeling is irrelevant. The psy- 
chological datum is the feeling itself, the feeling as felt ; 
and the business of psychology, as a descriptive science, 
is to analyse the conscious representation of meaning — 
in the present case, the representation of the meaning 
'real' — which the feeling is or contains. It seems to me 
(though I speak with reserve, as I have not yet carried 
the question into the laboratory) that the feelings of 
reality are always of an emotive character, implying 
affective process in connection with kinesthetic or other 
organic sensations, and running their course under the 
influence of an Aufgabe or Einstellung. I am sure that, 
in my own experience, they are complex. 

Nevertheless, they might still include an unanalysable 
core or residuum, a non-sensational and non-affective 

* Woodworth, in his Non-Sensory Elements of Sense Perception 
(Journ. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iv., 1907, 169 ff.), seems actu- 
ally to accept this conclusion. "Each thing perceived, each size 
and shape distinguished, probably we should add each relation 
observed, has its own felt quality, which is not one of the qualities 
of sensation." "The appropriate size qualities and distance qual- 
ities are clapped on to the sense presentation without the inter- 
mediary of sensorial imagery." "The thing quality must be 
present if we are to have the consciousness of a thing or of 
properties of a thing." The doctrine is, evidently, an extreme 
form of Mach's doctrine of sensations and von Ehrenfels' doctrine 
of Gestaltqualitaten (to which Woodworth refers, 171). It in- 
volves, among other things, that arithmetical treatment of psycho- 
logy which Woodworth elsewhere {Essays Philosophical and 
Psychological, 1908, 493) rightly rejects: see I. M. Bentley, The 
Psych, of Mental Arrangement, Amer. Journ. Psych., xiii., 1909, 
576 ff. For a general criticism, with which I am in substantial 
agreement, I may refer to Bentley, loc. cit., 228 ff. 



256 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

elementary process ; and this core or residuum might be 
their essential feature, as reality-feelings. I reply, first, 
that I do not find it, although I know well enough what 
the 'contrast' is between a memory-image of the Doge's 
palace and a poetry image of the towers of Camelot. 
And I reply, secondly, that — even if we grant its exist- 
ence, in minds of a certain type — it cannot rank as a 
mental element until it has been characterised as mental 
content, defined in attributive terms. On this point I 
take issue, not only with Calkins, but with James as well. 
"Damit," says Messer, "dass gelegentlich unter beson- 
deren Bedingungen die Erfassung der Bedeutung, das 
Verstehen, als besonderes Erlebnis zu Bewusstsein kommt, 
ist nun natiirlich noch nicht gegeben, dass dies Erlebnis 
genauer beschrieben oder analysiert werden kann" (77). 
That is true, if it is a little obvious. "Die klare 
Erkennung eines bestimmten psychischen Phanomens und 
sein Unterscheiden von anderen psychischen Phanomenen 
kann stattfinden," says Storring, "ohne dass deshalb 
das Individuum in der Lage zu sein braucht, eine psy- 
chologische Beschreibung des betreffenden Phanomens 
unter Angabe des Unterschieds von ahnlichen Phanom- 
enen zu vollziehen. Mit anderen Worten: in vielen 
Fallen wird von dem das psychische Phanomen erleben- 
den Individuum erkannt, dass es sich um das Phanomen 
handelt, und es wird deutlich von ahnlichen Phanomenen 
unterschieden, aber worin der Unterschied besteht, kann 
nicht im einzelnen angegeben werden oder ist wenigstens 
schwer angebbar" (Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xiv., 1909, 
20). That also, if we take the general sense of the 
passage, is true. Introspection demands conditions, and 
demands observers. But if the differentiae are not speci- 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV 257 

fied, we have no right to count the experiences as 
elemental. When James declares that "the challenge to 
produce these psychoses [the transitive parts of the 
stream of thought] . . . is as unfair as Zeno's treat- 
ment of the advocates of motion" {Princ, i., 244), and 
when Calkins postulates a mental element without men- 
tioning its attributes, — without anything more than the 
bare intimation that it will be found 'embedded' in the 
memory-image if that is contrasted with a poetry image, 
— these writers seem to me to miss the purpose and 
to underestimate the responsibilities of psychology. 
For the exhibition of psychoses, their analysis, the 
discovery and formulation of their laws of connection, 
all this is precisely the business of psychology:* and 
indeed, it is but fair to say that James, having made his 
disclaimer, addresses himself resolutely to the task dis- 
claimed, f Moreover, the introduction of a new element 
should, in the present state of psychology, be tentative 
only, accompanied by references con as well as pro. Its 
dogmatic assertion, in a text-book, absolves the student 

* Biihler is within his rights when he says : "Zu verlangen : 
Charakterisieren Sie mir dieses Wissen durch Angabe seiner 
Intensitat und seiner (Empfindungs-)Qualitaten, ist ebenso klug 
als die Forderung: Charakterisieren Sie mir die raumliche Tiefe 
durch Hohe und Breite" (361). But he is within his rights be- 
cause he has 'produced' — by experimental procedure and to his 
own satisfaction — mental processes which can be grouped neither 
with ideas nor with feelings nor with attitudes. Marbe writes to 
the point in Zeits., xlvi., 1908, 353 f. 

1 1 have pointed out, in Lect. I., the inconsistency between 
James' treatment of the transitive feelings and his treatment of 
the feeling of the central active self. I have referred, in the same 
Lect., to my personal tendency to travel, under verbal guidance, 
out of my visual schema, and so to involve myself in contradiction 
and to become loose-ended in statement. It is not, I hope, 
17 



258 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

from any attempt at introspection in a direction where 
first-hand judgment is imperatively needed;* its forth- 
right acceptance, by the psychologist, gives an appear- 
ance of finality to chapters that are very far from 
closed.f 

22 Messer, 209. 

23 Ach, 230 ff. Cf . Watt, 368 fF. 

24 Watt, 429. 

25 Ibid., 423. Watt is at pains, throughout his thesis, 
to take account of Wundt's opinions, and especially of 
the Wundtian doctrine of apperception : e.g., 321, 359 f ., 

impertinent to remark that the passage in Princ, L, 244 strikes 
me as precisely analogous to one of my own verbal rushes; I am 
speaking simply of mode of composition. In my experience, the 
verbal flow runs at a white heat; language becomes picturesque, 
and full of metaphor; I achieve sentences that I am heartily 
sorry to destroy. I infer that James often writes in this way, 
and that—having no visual schema — he lets his loose ends lie. 

* The sole introspective mark which Calkins offers is that the 
feeling of realness "is always realised as belonging to some ele- 
ment or complex of elements" (124). This realisation is, how- 
ever, a matter of 'reflective observation' (ibid., and 132 f.) ; and, 
since it attaches equally to the affections and to the feelings of 
relation, it cannot serve here as differentia. I come back to it in 
Lect. V. 

t Calkins' argument runs as follows : "It cannot be too often 
repeated that an obstinately realised difference between one set 
of psychic phenomena and another, even if the difference cannot 
be analysed and explained, is nevertheless a sufficient reason for 
distinguishing the experiences. Now there certainly is a recognised 
difference between the feelings of 'like,' 'more' and 'one,' and the 
feelings of 'red,' 'warm' and 'pleasant'; and this difference in 
itself suffices to mark these off as distinct groups of conscious 
elements" (132). The first sentence is correct; but the second 
does not follow from it. Realised differences must be rubricated 
under the specific headings of their difference. Thus a perception 
is always and obstinately different from a volition; yet neither 
perception nor volition is a conscious element. 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV 259 

400, 403 ff., 419, 421 ff. It is strange that he has 
not sought to bring Wundt's psychology of judgment 
into connection with his own theory of the Aufgabe. 
Wundt writes as follows: "Meistens steht . . . die 
urspriingliche Gesammtvorstellung zuerst nur als ein 
undeutlicher Complex einzelner Vorstellungen vor un- 
serem Bewusstsein ; die einzelnen Theile dieses Complexes 
und die Art ihrer Verbindung treten dann erst bestimmter 
wahrend der Zerlegung hervor. Es kann so der Schein 
entstehen, als wenn das Denken erst die Theile zusam- 
mensuchte, die es in der successiven Gliederung der 
Gesammtvorstellung an einander fiigt. Nichtsdesto- 
weniger ergibt es sich auch hier . . . dass das Ganze, 
wenngleich in undeutlicher Form, friiher appercipirt 
werden musste, als seine Theile. Nur so erklart sich 
die bekannte Thatsache, dass wir ein verwickeltes Satz- 
gefiige leicht ohne Stoning zu Ende fiihren konnen. 
Dies ware unmoglich, wenn nicht bei Beginn desselben 
schon das Ganze vorgestellt wiirde. Der Vollzug der 
Urtheilsfunction besteht daher, psychologisch betrachtet, 
darin, dass wir die dunkeln Umrisse des Gesammtbildes 
successiv deutlicher machen, so dass dann am Ende des 
zusammengesetzten Denkactes auch das Ganze klarer 
vor unserm Bewusstsein steht" (Physiol. Psych., iii., 
1903, 575). Watt, now, has given us his equivalent of 
the apperceptive activities; and it would seem that he 
might, similarly, translate the Gesammtvorstellung — es- 
pecially in view of its origin in Wundt's system — into 
an Aufgabe-consciousness. One may grant that the 
translation would be forced, and yet see that there is a 
common element in the two theories. Watt, on the con- 



260 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

trary, sets them in sharp opposition (412): ct. refs. in 
Lecture V., Note 31. 

26 Ach, 224. 

27 Ibid. "1st die Absicht von guter Konzentration 
der Aufmerksamkeit begleitet, so besteht auch noch eine 
Zukunftsbeziehung insofern, als die Absicht auf die 
kunf tig eintretende konkrete Bezugsvorstellung gerichtet 
ist" (the 'concrete idea of object' is the perception of 
object, the presented stimulus). This 'relation to the 
future' is, apparently, a conscious process. We need 
not quarrel with its name, any more than we quarrel 
with the names 'idea of end 5 and 'idea of object,' so 
long as we realise that name does not in any way specify 
contents. It would, however, be wrong to imagine that 
there must be, in the Absicht, any conscious representa- 
tion of futurity, of the temporal to-be or to-come. That 
is no more the case with purpose than it is with 
expectation. 

28 Ibid., 193. 

29 Ibid., 228. Ach, like Watt, operates with the con- 
cept of apperception: see, e.g., 116 ff., 214, 225 ff. 

30 Marbe, 52. 31 Ibid., 53 f . 
32 Watt, 416. 33 Ibid., 410. 

34 Watt, 230; Messer, 111. Watt writes (411) : "alles, 
was nur vermoge der eigenen Kraft von Reproduktions- 
tendenzen geschieht, ist noch nicht Urteil. Das sieht 
man deutlich an alien Gedachtnisversuchen und der- 
gleichen"; and refers, apparently with approval, to 
Wundt, Physiol. Psych., iii., 1903, 580, where a sharp 
distinction is drawn between associative and apperceptive 
processes. "Wird die Reproduktion," he goes on, "bis 
zu einem gewissen Grade aufdringlich, dann ist die Vp. 






NOTES TO LECTURE IV 261 

nicht mehr geneigt, das Erlebnis uberhaupt als Urteil 
anzusehen." And he concludes: "was den Anteil des 
Faktors der blossen Reproduktion im Urteil betrifft, ist 
es eine notwendige Bedingung zum Zustandekommen 
eines Urteils, dass mehr als eine Reproduktion auf das 
betreffende Reizerlebnis folgen kann" (411 f.). 

It is regrettable that Watt did not make experiments 
with free association. Suppose that such experiments 
are made, and that the observer does not specialise the 
Aufgabe. The results should, by hypothesis, be associa- 
tions, not judgments: Messer (95) reports that one of 
his observers gave himself the express instruction "Sollst 
nicht assoziieren, sondern ein Urteil aussprechen." Yetj 
if they proceed from the Aufgabe, they must, according 
to Watt, be judgments. Aesthetic contemplation, too, 
seems to me, very definitely, to imply an Einstellung, 
which in turn implies and is conditioned upon a foregone 
Aufgabe. And since we have become interested in psy- 
choanalysis, most of us, I fancy, find that our reveries 
and day-dreams, the free play of the reproductive im- 
agination, are also determined by more or less remote 
Aufgaben. On this side, then, it is difficult to draw 
the dividing line, by Watt's definition, between judg- 
ment and non- judgment. 

On the other side, of singly determined reproduction, 
there is also a difficulty. We have, say, the Aufgabe 
of memorising a set of nonsense-syllables. After a cer- 
tain number of repetitions, the course of reproduction 
is determined. But with any less number of repetitions, 
it is possible "dass mehr als eine Reproduktion auf das 
betreffende Reizerlebniss folgen kann." The same thing 
holds, of course, of the memorising of sense-material. 



262 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

Where does judgment end, and the play of reproductive 
tendencies begin? Or is judgment involved at all? 
Moreover, if it is the Aufdringlichkeit of a response to 
stimulus that differentiates association from judgment, 
then has not Watt, in this Aufdringlichkeit, a second 
(even if a negative) psychological criterion of judg- 
ment? There are, indeed, various connections in which 
Watt's analysis appears inadequate: see, e.g., what is 
said of Verwerfen, 324, 340. 

35 Messer, 93. Cf . Buhler, 331. 

36 Ibid., 105. In Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., *., 1907, 
416, Messer writes: "Auf Grand der Angdben meiner 
Versuchspersonen hatte ich (a. a. 0. S. 105) das 
Urteilserlebnis bei Reaktionsversuchen so beschrieben" 
(italics mine) ; and in the following account of the in- 
struction given to the observers, he makes no mention 
of the predicative relation. Has he then forgotten the 
passage a. a. O. S. 93? 

37 Ibid., 3 f . ; Watt, 290. 

38 Messer, 105 ff. The term Beziehung is here used 
in its active sense, so that in strictness Beziehungserlebnis 
should be translated 'feeling of relating,' and the phrase 
'feeling of relation' should be reserved for the experi- 
ences discussed in Lecture V., Note 28. The observers 
speak of an 'aktives Zusammenfassen' (99), and Messer 
himself of 'der Charakter der Aktivitat beim Urteilsvoll- 
zug' (125). Messer later attempts the analysis of 
'bewusstes, aktives Beziehen' (195 ff.), and comes to 
nothing more definite than phenomena of attention 
( ' Auf merksamkeitszusammenhang,' 'gleichzeitiges auf- 
merksames Erfassen'), — the same phenomena that are 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV 263 

mentioned by his observers (105 f.) as characteristic of 
the predicative relation in particular. 

The 'feeling of relation' is thus, for Messer, a 
Bewusstseinslage ; the 'f eeling of relating' is a matter of 
attention. The latter explanation, however, has its diffi- 
culties. Thus, in his discussion of 'bewusstes, aktives 
Beziehen,' Messer remarks: "freilich fehlt es dabei auch 
nicht an Fallen, bei denen die Beziehung ohne Zutun 
des Subjekts gewissermassen von selbst gegeben er- 
scheint" (195). This may perhaps mean simply that 
the observer sometimes finds himself relating, slips into 
relating (under the conditions of the experiment) as a 
matter of course ; the feeling of relating itself may still 
be a function of attention. More serious are the ob- 
jections (198 f.) that the reference to attention does 
not account for all the various modes of relating, pre- 
dicative and other, that come to the observer's con- 
sciousness ; and that it is at least an open question 
whether simultaneous 'apprehension' by the attention 
necessarily rouses the feeling of relating. 

If I may risk an opinion, on the basis of a limited 
number of rather casual introspections, I should say that 
these difficulties are not insuperable. Active attention 
is always 'voluntary' attention, that is, attention under 
Aufgabe; and the 'ideas' that are simultaneously appre- 
hended by active attention are, under Messer's conditions, 
always meanings (51, 188; cf. Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., 
x., 1907, 418). It might, then, be argued, with some 
plausibility, that the sets and adjustments of active at- 
tention form the conscious representation of 'relating': 
that differences of Aufgabe account for the various 
modes of this relating, and that the determinate appre- 



264 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

hension of two meanings, their apprehension under a 
single Aufgabe, must arouse the relating consciousness. 
However, the question can be decided only by further 
experimental work. — 

The slipperiness of terms is attested by Biihler's criti- 
cisms (Biihler, 346 [cf. 316] ; Arch, de Psych., vi., 1907, 
378) and by Messer's replies {Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., 
x., 1907, 418 f.). It is inevitable, so long as the terms 
are common to psychology and to logic, — not to speak 
of the looseness of their ordinary, everyday use. 

39 Ibid., 107 f. 40 Ibid., 112, 114. 

41 Ibid., 109. 42 Ibid., 112. 

43 Ibid., 113. 

44 Ibid., 113. Messer is speaking of Ebbinghaus' 
memory-work. He does not, himself, raise the ques- 
tion of justification; he simply says: "es ist daher 
charakteristisch, dass [dieser] Forschungszweig erst 
dann die entscheidende Wendung zu exakterer Gestaltung 
nahm, als H. Ebbinghaus . . . dazu griff, als Unter- 
suchungsmaterial sinnlose Silben zu verwenden." The 
'daher' follows from the bare fact of there being two 
"Wege der psychologischen Forschung" (112). 

45 Ibid., 111. Cf. Ach's 'Einverstandnis des Sub- 
jektes,' 230 ff. 

4Q Ibid., 111. Cf. P. Bovet, Arch, de Psych., viii., 
1908, 20. — Here I am interpreting. Messer does not say 
that the discovery of the 'eigenartiges Erlebnis' of voli- 
tion or intention is due to the existential attitude of de- 
scriptive psychology; indeed, the trend of his later 
remarks would seem to make that attitude, over against 
the judgment, inadequate and mistaken. But if you are 
to compare an Urteil with a blosse Assoziation, you must 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV 265 

compare them under the same conditions. To get a 
mere association, you must have the artificial idea-atti- 
tude, the attitude that makes the conscious contents as 
such the object of attention: I suppose, then, that in 
the comparison of judgment with association, for the 
discovery of a 'besondere Bewusstseinsqualitat,' this 
attitude must be continued. Indeed, it seems to be im- 
plied in all of Messer's introspective work. 

47 Ibid., 121. 

48 Ibid., 115 ff., esp. 121. "Dass in diesem Bejahen 
und Verneinen, Anerkennen und Verwerfen ein Erlebnis 
spezifischer Art vorliegt, dass es jedenfalls von den 
'Vorstellungen' zu unterscheiden ist, das diirfte das 
Berechtigte an Brentanos Urteilslehre sein." 

49 Ach, 209 f . 

50 Messer, 112. I have already, in Note 46, pointed 
out what I take to be Messer's inconsistency in this 
connection, and I refer to the 'stimulus error' (in con- 
nection with Biihler's results) in Note 64 below. What 
I say in the text has, of course, been said over and over 
again by the experimentalists. I quote the last author 
to come into my hands: "Unser gewohnliches Leben 
bewegt sich in der Welt der Gegenstande ; jeder Eindruck 
ist fur uns nur Seite eines Gegenstandes. Das Ex- 
periment dagegen sucht mit reinen Eindriicken zu 
arbeiten" (O. Klemm, Psychol. Studien, v., 1909, 85). 

51 Ibid., 121 f . 

52 Ibid., 8 f ., 10, 208. 

53 Ibid., 209 ; cf . Biihler, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xii., 
1908, 5. 

"/&«&, 125 f., 126 f., 145 f.; cf. Biihler, Arch, 
de Psych., vi., 1907, 379. Messer defends himself (Arch. 



266 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

f. d. ges. Psych., x., 1907, 420 f.) by the statement that 
" 'Erlebt' und 'Bemerkt' werden ist nicht dasselbe." But 
what — for descriptive psychology — is an 'unbemerktes 
Erlebnis'? Messer himself had previously applied the 
law of growth and decay in a very different fashion: 
see the ref. in Note 22 above. 

55 Buhler, 310. 

56 Ibid., 310 f., 313 f ., 347 f ., 351 ff. 

57 Ibid., 315 f . 

58 Ibid., 317. 

59 Buhler, 315. Cf . von Aster, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 
1908, 63. "Ich glaube [Buhler] nicht misszuverstehen, 
wenn ich annehme, dass der Ausdruck 'zustandliche' 
Erlebnisstrecke die Bewusstseinslage . . . gerade im 
Gegensatz zu den Gedanken charakterisieren soil. Das 
Zustandliche steht, scheint mir, hier entgegen dem In- 
tentionalen, wenn wir diesen Husserlschen Ausdruck im 
weitesten Sinn nehmen." Buhler, in fact, says very little ; 
and I doubt if he has thought out the distinction in the 
way suggested. 

60 Watt, 430 : instances occur 304, 324, 332, 339, etc. 
The difficulty lies in such instances as day-dreaming. 
If that type of consciousness is not determined by an 
Aufgabe, how can the attitude be so determined? — for 
day-dreaming is, at times, little more than a succession 
of attitudes. 

61 Buhler, 318 ; cf . 321 : "ich behaupte . . . dass 
prinzipiell jeder Gegenstand vollstandig ohne Anschau- 
ungshilfen bestimmt gedacht (gemeint) werden kann." 

62 Ibid., 361. 

63 Ibid., 329, 330. Biihler is criticised in some detail 
by Messer, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., x., 1907, 421 ff., and 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV 267 

by Dtirr, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 318 fF. Cf. also 
Bovet, Arch, de Psych., viii., 1908, 33 fF. 

04 On the stimulus-error see my Exp. Psych., II., ii., 
1905, lxiii., etc. The name 'stimulus-error' is natural, 
since the confusion lies, in terms of Fechnerian psycho- 
physics, between 'sensation' and 'stimulus.' Intrinsically, 
however, 'thing-error' or 'object-error' would be a better 
phrase ; what the naive observer confuses with his mental 
process is not the physical stimulus, but the thing of 
common sense. The error itself is widespread and in- 
sidious. It is responsible, I believe, among other things, 
for the current tendency to deny the attribute of in- 
tensity to the image. 

65 Buhler, 311. 

66 E. von Aster, Die psychologische Beobachtung und 
experimentelle Untersuchung von Denkvorgangen, Zeits. 
f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 102; cf. 77. The writer himself 
tentatively reduces the experiences that are character- 
isable as 'Bewusstsein von,' 'Wissen um,' to three types : 
(1) "gefiihlsbetonte Bewusstseinslagen, seien sie nun 
direkt erlebte oder eingefuhlte 'zustandliche Erlebnis- 
strecken'"; (2) 'Uebergangserlebnisse,' that is, direct 
impressions of sameness, difference, relation, in which a 
comparison is not involved; and (3) "optische, akust- 
ische, haptische u. s. w. Vorstellungsinhalte." 

67 Ibid., 69, 71. Obvious instances of the substitu- 
tion of Kundgabe for Beschreibung will be found in 
E. D. Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion; an Em- 
pirical Study of the Growth of Religious Consciousness, 
1899 (cf. J. H. Leuba, Psychol. Review, vii., 1900, 515). 
A much subtler instance is afforded by W. H. Sheldon, 
Analysis of Simple Apprehension, Psychol. Review, xvi., 



268 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

1909, 107 ff. Reference may be made also to Binet's 
list of characterising terms, 303; to various phrases 
employed by Storring's observers in their study of the 
'Bewusstsein d. Giiltigkeit' (Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xiv., 
1909, 1 ff.); and to Ach's 'intentional' movement sen- 
sations (Ach, 40, 49 ff., 149 ff.; Messer, 59 f.). The 
sensations themselves are described, but the adjective 
'intentional' is not descriptive ; it is, however, introduced 
with the explicit statement that "eine genauere Analyse 
. . . war nicht moglich." 

I may add that one of the principal difficulties in the 
way of a psychology of the Aufgabe itself lies in the 
fact that the problem, as given to the observer, must be 
couched in terms of information. The observer, respond- 
ing to the inf ormatory attitude of the experimenter, will 
naturally take up the same attitude to himself, — will 
repeat 'subordinate idea, superordinate idea, find a part,' 
etc., without effort to translate the instruction into 
descriptive terms. 

68 E. Diirr, Ueber die experimented Untersuchung 
der Denkvorgange, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 315, 
323, etc. Diirr's own view is given as follows: "ich 
schliesse mich der Ansicht derjenigen an, die in dem 
Raumbewusstsein, im Zeitbewusstsein, im Bewusstsein 
von Gleichheit, Aehnlichkeit, Verschiedenheit oder (zu- 
sammengefasst) im Vergleichsbewusstsein und im Be- 
wusstsein von Indentitat und Einheit . . . ein . . . 
Plus anerkennen, welches im Vorstellungsleben neben den 
Empfindungen vorhanden ist. Und eben dieses Plus, 
von den Empfindungen abgelost, scheint mir das Wesen 
des abstrakten Denkens auszumachen. Als zusammenfas- 
sender Name fur dieses Plus scheint mir der Name 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV 269 

Beziehungsbewusstsein geeignet, wenn man dieses 
Wort ohne Nebenbedeutung lediglich als Bezeichnung 
fur die betreffende Klasse von Bewusstseinstatsachen 
gebraucht. Man muss sich dabei freilich sehr hiiten, an 
die Beziehungen zu denken, die wir neben den Dingen, 
Eigenschaften und Zustanden als die vierte Klasse von 
Denkobjekten zu betrachten gewohnt sind. Durch das 
Beziehungsbewusstsein erfassen wir nicht nur Beziehung- 
en, sondern auch Dinge, Eigenschaften und Zustande" 
(326). 

69 Ibid., 316. In his reply to von Aster and Diirr 
(Zeits. f. Psych., li., 1909, 108 fF.), Biihler makes two 
points which call for notice here. (1) He doubts whether 
von Aster's Kundgabe is identical with Diirr's sprach- 
licher Ausdruck (118; cf. Bericht uber d. III. Kongress 
f. exp. Psych., 1909, 104). The identification is made 
by von Aster {ibid., xlix., 107) ; and it seems to me that 
the Kundgabe, the sprachliche Ausdruck, and my own 
reference to the stimulus-error all contain practically the 
same criticism, though the form in which the criticism 
is presented naturally varies with the standpoint and 
preoccupation of the critic. (2) Biihler admits that his 
observers' reports contain a large proportion of Kund- 
gabe and sprachliche Darstellung; but he adds: "man 
darf dabei auch nicht aus dem Auge verlieren, dass ich 
vieles mitteilen musste, nur um den Zusammenhang 
verstandlich zu machen, in dem das stand, worauf es 
gerade in dem Protokoll ankam" (118). He refers also 
to his original article, 318: "es kommt darin [in the 
reports quoted] jeweils nur auf den hervorgehobenen 
Teil an, wir miissen aber hier die Protokolle ganz an- 
fiihren, damit man sehen kann, in welchem Zusammen- 



270 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

hang die anschauungslosen Gedanken auf getreten sind." 
The reply does not fit the criticism. It is, of course, 
precisely the 'anschauungslosen Gedanken' against which 
von Aster is arguing ; it is the italicised part of the pro- 
tocols that is in question; von Aster would not for a 
moment deny that true psychological description, true 
introspective detail is mixed in with the Kundgabe, where 
the report is not concerned with what Biihler interprets 
as the thought-element. Besides: if Biihler knew that 
his observers' reports were only in part descriptive, in- 
trospective, why did he not attempt to separate the 
essential from the inessential, the description from the 
connective intimation? Why does he fall, for instance, 
into an obvious confusion of the two in his reference to 
the range of consciousness (Biihler, 348)? 

I agree with von Aster that the experimenters of the 
Wiirzburg school began with a descriptive problem; 
the Bewusstseinslage was, avowedly, introduced to save 
the situation in cases where introspective analysis, under 
the conditions of the experiment, was at fault. But the 
whole tendency of the work has been away from de- 
scription, and towards Kundgabe. Watt (345) cen- 
sures an observer for confining his introspective report 
to perception and sensation, idea, feeling and attitude; 
the effort at rubrication is likely to miss the transitory 
phases of consciousness. Watt, of course, was justified 
from his own point of view; he could rubricate for 
himself, after the report was handed in. Nevertheless, 
the call for a full description of a complex consciousness 
puts a premium on Kundgabe. The tendency becomes 
increasingly manifest in Messer and Ach; and is clearly 
realised in Biihler. Every one of Messer's attitudes 






NOTES TO LECTURE IV 271 

(181 ff.) and feelings (187) sets a problem to descrip- 
tive psychology. 

70 Binet, e.g., 81 f . 

71 Journ. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iii., 1906, 704. 

72 Essays Philos. and Psychol, 1908, 491 f ., 499. I 
return to the question of the 'feelings of relation 5 in 
Lecture V. 

73 Messer, 51 ff. 

74 G. Storring, Experimented Untersuchungen iiber 
einfache Schlussprozesse, Arch. f. d. ges. Psych. , xi., 
1908, 1 ff. Storring's interest is primarily' logical ; he 
wishes to ascertain whether inference necessarily implies 
spatial ideation, whether the conclusion is derived from 
the premisses by a synthesis of the thoughts contained 
in the premisses, etc. ; though he also acknowledges the 
suggestion received from the Wiirzburg studies of con- 
cept and judgment (1 f.). The paper has no sum- 
mary; nor is there any explicit reference in the text 
(save that to space, 77 f.) to the problems mentioned 
in the introduction : the reason is, perhaps, that the pre- 
sent investigation, with visual material, is to be supple- 
mented by another, in which the premisses are to be given 
in auditory form. 

The article is difficult reading, since Storring describes 
his observers' 'operations' in logical terms, and throws 
the introspective reports into running narrative. I 
take a simple instance. "Hier tritt," says Storring, of 
a certain inference involving the relations 'larger' and 
'smaller,' "hier tritt das Bewusstsein der nur reprasen- 
tativen Bedeutung dieser Lagebeziehungen sehr schon 
hervor." The introspective report, after characterising 
the observer's efforts at visual localisation, reads : "dabei 



272 NOTES TO LECTURE IV 

wurde gedacht: je hoher um so grosser" (55). This, 
then, is the consciousness of the merely representative 
significance of the positional relations. But what was 
'dieser Gedanke'? Was it a series of words, or an atti- 
tude, or a complex of words and attitude? Or is the 
term 'thought' used in its popular meaning, without 
reflection upon its psychological significance? 

In order to gain light upon this and similar ques- 
tions, I have myself worked through a fairly large num- 
ber of examples of the same sort as those used by 
Storring. Unfortunately, my tendency is towards a 
purely mechanical procedure (cf. Storring, e.g., 65, 72, 
97, 107) ; I 'read off' the conclusion from the premisses, 
oftentimes without any special 'AufFassung' of the 
premisses themselves, very much as one factorises a 
familiar algebraical expression. Sometimes I get a 
visual schema, into which I 'throw' the terms of the 
premisses by movement of finger or eyes or head : even so, 
however, the conclusion shoots to a point, in verbal terms, 
almost before I am aware of the visual and kinesthetic 
images. I may add that the placing of an 'earlier' to 
the left and of a 'later' to the right is, for me, as nat- 
ural as the placing of a 'past' behind my back and a 
'future' in front of me; so that if I come, without 
practice, to the major premiss "Process A later than 
process C," I instinctively throw C over to the other side 
of A, — I see the curve of the path, and feel the move- 
ment of throwing; though, with a little practice, this 
imagery disappears. I doubt if the localisation has 
anything to do with the left-to-right movements of 
reading (36 f.\. 

It is, however, not an easy matter to experiment on 



NOTES TO LECTURE IV 273 

oneself, and I should probably have had fuller con- 
sciousnesses had I been observing under Storring's 
instructions. A general appreciation of his work is 
hardly possible without this first-hand experience. I 
note only that he cannot at all mean to imply that the 
various forms of 'consciousness 9 appearing in (or in- 
ferred from) the introspective reports are to be regarded, 
off-hand, as ultimate and unanalysable; for he devotes 
a later paper to the special analysis of that "Bewusstsein 
absoluter Sicherheit" with which the observers in the 
present enquiry were enjoined to draw their conclusions 
(3: cf. Experimented und psychopathologische Unter- 
suchungen iiber das Bewusstsein der Giiltigkeit, Arch, 
f. d. ges. Psych., xiv., 1909, 1 ff-)- 



18 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 

1 W. C. Bagley, The Apperception of the Spoken 
Sentence, Amer. Journ. Psych., xii., 1900, 80 ff., esp. 
126. The admission made in the text has, of course, its 
obverse side ; Stout's observers would, in all probability, 
have an anti-sensationalistic bias. Bagley, as a matter 
of fact, recognises the possibility of an effective apper- 
ception when the only discriminable contents of con- 
sciousness are verbal ideas (117), and also when the 
associated imagery is inconsistent with the meaning of 
the sentence (121). Taylor (Zeits., xl., 1905, 228) 
brings this latter result into connection with Marbe's 
conclusions: he himself (239) adduces evidence of the 
irrelevant visual associates to which I have referred in 
Lecture I. 

The marginal theory of meaning, which Bagley 
developes briefly in Amer. Journ. Psych, and more 
elaborately in The Educative Process, 1905, gives a 
consistently sensationalistic account of certain Bewusst- 
seinslagen (Taylor, 248), which seems to fit the observed 
facts. That it has not been discussed by recent workers 
in the field of attitude may be ascribed, perhaps, to the 
difference of material: Bagley worked with auditory, 
the rest for the most part with visual stimuli. It is 
further possible that pattern and composition of the 
attitude vary even with variation of the experimental 
method, as employed upon the same sort of material: 
cf . Watt, 367 f . 

2 G. E. Miiller and F. Schumann, Ueber die psychol. 

274 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 275 

Grundlagen der Vergleichung gehobener Gewichte, 
Arch. f. d. ges. Physiol, xlv., 1889, 37 ff. 

3 Kiilpe, Grundriss, 1893, 422 f., 427 f., 428 f . ; 
Outlines, 1909, 407 f ., 412, 413 f . ; Anfange u. Aus- 
sichten d. exper. Psych., Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos., vi., 
1893, 466. Cf . the discussion in Watt, 403 ff. ; Ach, 
156 ff. 

4 G. Mkrtius, Ueber die muskulare Reaction und die 
Aufmerksamkeit, Philos. Studien, vi., 1891, e.g., 175 f. 

5 H. Miinsterberg, Beitr. z. experiment. Psych., i., 
1899, e.g., 75 f., 90, 168. 

6 L. Lange, Neue Experimente uber d. Vorgang d, 
einfachen Reactionen auf Sinneseindriicke, Philos* 
Studien, iv., 1888, 487 ff. "(1) Es lassen sich einer- 
seits Reactionen gewinnen, wenn man an den bevor- 
stehenden Sinneseindruck gar nicht denkt, dagegen so 
lebhaft als moglich die Innervation der auszufiihrenden 
Reactionsbewegung vorbereitet. (2) Andererseits kann 
man, indem man jede vorbereitende Bewegun innerva- 
tion grundsdtzlich vermeidet, seine ganze vorbereitende 
Spannung dem zu erwartenden Sinneseindrucke zuwen- 
den, wobei man sich aber gleichzeitig vornimmt, un- 
mittelbar nach Auffassung des Eindruckes, ohne bei 
diesem unnothig zu verweilen, den Impuls zur Bewegung 
folgen zu lassen. ... Es versteht sich fast von selbst, 
dass man auch einen Mittelweg zwischen den beiden 
extremen Methoden einschlagen kann, indem man seine 
Spannung sozusagen nach irgend einem Theilverhaltniss 
zwischen Hand und Ohr theilt. . . . Mit Riicksicht 
auf die extremen Methoden aber miissen wir uns eines 
immer gegenwartig halten: der Spannungsgrad der 
Erwartung ist bei beiden vollkommen der namliche und 



276 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

nur die Richtung, nach welcher hin die Etfwartung 
gespannt ist, eine verschiedene." And again (510): 
"Die musculare Reaction . . . stellt . . . eine unwill- 
kiirliche, reflectorische Bewegung dar, allerdings eine 
solche, die unter dem nachwirkenden Einflusse eines 
vorangegangenen Willensimpulses erfolgt." This is 
admirably clear; and Ach remarks, with truth, that 
"L. Lange hat durch seine Beobachtung, dass die Dauer 
der Reaktionsversuche in enger Beziehung zur vor- 
bereitenden Aufmerksamkeitsspannung steht, wohl mehr 
zur Erforschung dieses Gebietes beigetragen als samt- 
liche vorhergehenden Untersuchungen zusammen ge- 
nommen" (Ach, 6 f.)- 

7 Leviathan, pt. i., ch. iii. (Works, ed. Molesworth, 
iii., 1839, 12 ff.). Cf. Human Nature, ch. iv. (iv., 
1840, 14) ; Physics, ch. xxv. (i., 1839, 398). 

8 J. Volkelt, Psychologische Streitf ragen, i. Selbst- 
beobachtung und psychol. Analyse, Zeits. f. Philos. u. 
philos. Kritik, N. F. xc, 1887, 11. Much of the earlier 
part of this paper, and much of Wundt's controversial 
reply to it (Selbstbeobachtung und innere Wahrnehm- 
ung, Philos. Studien, iv., 1888, 292 if.), are written 
in the very spirit of an Aufgabe-Tpsychology. I have 
already indicated my position on the general question, 
in Lecture III., Note 14 above. 

9 I venture to suggest that there is a danger, in some 
fields of current psychological investigation, that the 
extreme difficulty of introspection be lost sight of. No 
one who knows anything of the history of psychology 
needs to be reminded of this difficulty ; it has been dis- 
cussed, and it has been illustrated, over and over and 
over again. Yet there are recent writers who take a 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 277 

light-hearted appeal to introspection, — as if vexed ques- 
tions could be settled out of hand, as if there were 
nothing to do but to 'look into consciousness, 5 as if 
introspective attitude and introspective capacity were 
the common property of anyone who cares to exercise 
them. Now, in the first place, there are very different 
degrees of introspective ability. Whether it is ever 
entirely lacking, as musical ability may be entirely 
lacking, I do not know ; the historical instances are 
equivocal; Comte, e.g., may have had it, in some meas- 
ure, and have lost it by his preoccupation with other 
methods. But there is no doubt that the introspective 
talent or the introspective gift differs enormously in 
different individuals. In the second place, the ability, 
in whatever degree it is present, must be trained by long 
and arduous practice, if the results of introspection are 
to be valid. And even so, the introspective observer is 
still, to some extent, at the mercy of circumstances. 
"On peut," remarks Binet (155), "pendant une annee, 
analyser assidument la structure d'un esprit sans s'aper- 
cevoir d'une propriete mentale de prime importance, que 
l'echange fortuit d'une question et d'une reponse suffit 
a decouvrir en moins d'une minute." Yes ! and, in the 
same way, one may live on good psychological terms 
with one's own mind for a great many years, and fail 
to see something that — when the psychological moment 
arrives — stares one in the face. Here, indeed, lies a 
principal reason for the cultivation of a permanent 
introspective habit. If one is, always and everywhere, 
on the alert for psychological observation, chance will 
throw things in one's way that the special procedure of 
laboratory experiments may very possibly miss. 



278 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

I have, personally, a profound confidence in intro- 
spection, and I try to encourage a like confidence in 
my students. I believe that a great many psychological 
controversies might be laid to rest if the protagonists 
could get together, for half a year, and work the issue 
out under test conditions. We are now, as I have re- 
marked earlier in this book, sacrificing literary form in 
order to make a clean breast of our methods and intro- 
spective results; but nothing in the way of a printed 
report can, after all, take the place of common work 
and the conversational interchange of ideas. Psy- 
chology is here at a great disadvantage, as compared 
with the sciences of external nature, since physical 
apparatus and biological specimens may be shipped 
from place to place unaccompanied by their owners. 
At the same time, and with all this confidence, I have no 
respect for introspective authority. I have just referred 
to the lessons that we may learn from the history of 
psychology. There are plenty of similar lessons to be 
learned from individual experience. Again and again 
I have been honestly sure of an introspective result, only 
to find that a more refined enquiry, or the shift of the 
angle of observation, convicts me of error. It is a cer- 
tain consolation to note that precisely the same thing — 
despite the advantages of objectivity — holds of observa- 
tion in the natural sciences; the history of the micro- 
scope, for instance, and the present status of nerve 
histology, tell a like story. 

While, therefore, the introspective data of any given 
period represent, on the whole, the facts of mind so far 
as examined, we have to remember, first, that the 
exploration is still partial only, and secondly, that in a 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 279 

new field we are all of us liable to make mistakes. Above 
all, we have to remember that intrinsic difficulty of 
introspection to which I made reference at the outset. 
The hypothesis of fraud (if I may borrow a phrase 
from the students of Psychical Research) is excluded; 
we mean to be honest. And there are plenty of estab- 
lished results, let us say, in the sphere of sensation. 
Nevertheless, do we agree as regards the qualities of 
organic sensation? or as regards the 'effect of attention' 
upon the intensity of sensation? or even as regards the 
psychological simplicity of colours? 

So the present discussion between the representatives 
of sensationalism and intellectualism, in the realm of 
thought, must continue for a long time, before anything 
like a settlement can be expected. No single investiga- 
tion, still less any authoritative pronouncement, can 
solve or dismiss the problem. We must patiently 
accumulate and examine evidence, making what allow- 
ance we may for systematic and controversial bias on 
both sides, and sharpening our wits for the discovery of 
positive sources of error. There is no need to hurry; 
there is every need to take the work seriously. Psy- 
chology has been in somewhat of a hurry to reform the 
doctrine of feeling ; but we now see that years of labora- 
tory research and a great many doctorate theses will be 
required before we are able to form a decisive judgment. 
Psychology and the psychologising philosophers are, 
similarly, in somewhat of a hurry to accept the unanalys- 
able attitudes and the thought-elements of a trans- 
figured intellectualism. They may prove to be in the 
right, as the champions of a multidimensional feeling 
may be in the right. But they have not yet made out 



280 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

their case ; and introspection will be as slow as any other 
court of appeal in rendering a final verdict. Meanwhile, 
it is the part of wisdom to accept a working hypothesis, 
and to push it as far as it will go ; but to be clear that 
it is nothing more than a working hypothesis, and to 
keep an open mind for the facts that will not fit it. 
And it is the part, not so much of psychological wisdom 
as of sheer psychological sanity, to realise the natural 
and inevitable difficulties of psychological observation. 

10 R. S. Woodworth, in Essays Philos. and Psychol., 
1908, 502 ff. James Angell, reviewing Woodworth's 
article in the Studies in Philos. and Psych. (1906) dedi- 
cated to C. E. Garman, declares that "the 'naked 
thought' concept is a logical abstraction finding no real 
psychological basis in a careful examination of con- 
sciousness" (Journ. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iii., 1906, 
641). Woodworth replies (ibid., 702) that a position 
like AngelPs is much more likely than his own "to owe 
its acceptance to logical deduction." 

Biihler thinks that the formulation of the problem, 
in the work both of Marbe and of Messer, betrays its 
"logische Herkunft" (303). He further believes that 
"die Gesichtspunkte [der] Unterscheidung [des direkten 
und indirekten Meinens], die schon der Wattschen 
Arbeit ihrer ganzen Anlage nach zu grunde liegen, 
sind ursprunglich aus erkenntnistheoretischen Erwa- 
gungen hervorgegangen" ; and that Messer is similarly 
contaminated (359). "Messer a obtenu un important 
materiel d'observation. . . . Malheureusement, Messer 
a interprets ce materiel en logicien. . . . II y a un 
fait specifique de jugement, et, ce fait, [Messer] le 
con^oit, en s'appuyant evidemment sur les definitions 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 281 

logiques de B. Erdmann, comme la prise de conscience 
d'une relation predicative" (Arch, de psych., vi., 1907, 
377). 

Messer is at no great pains to deny this impeachment, 
though he pleads that he has, on the whole, kept his 
logic separate from his psychology (Arch. f. d. ges. 
Psych., x., 1907, 419 ff.) Nor does he retort on Buhler, 
except in the assumption that Buhler is influenced by 
Husserl's and Kiilpe's epistemology (ibid., 421 ff.). 
That, indeed, is obvious ; and the charge becomes explicit 
in von Aster's remark that Biihler's "Experimente sind 
gewissermassen ein mehr oder minder absichtlicher 
Versuch, Husserls Phanomenologie experimentell zu 
priifen bzw. zu bestatigen" (Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 
1908, 62). Durr suggests that Buhler has commingled 
metaphysics and psychology: Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 
L908, 319 f. 

Ach (Vorwort, vi.) expressly reserves the episte- 
mological implications of his work for a later discussion. 

11 Cf . Wundt's discussion of panoramic and stereo- 
scopic vision, Princ. of Physiol. Psych., i., 1904, 299 ff. ; 
and the discussion of his genetic theory of tactual and 
visual space perception, Grundziige d. physiol. Psych., 
ii., 1902, 489 ff., 668 ff. See also Stumpf, Tonpsych., 
ii., 1890, 215 ff.; C. Stumpf and M. Meyer, Zeits. f. 
Psych, u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorgane, xviii., 1898, 394 
(feeling for the purity of musical intervals) ; C. Stumpf, 
Zeits. f. Psych., xliv., 1906, 44 ff. (sense-feelings); 
etc. I have touched on this topic in Exp. Psych., I., ii., 
1901, 228 ff. 

12 Feeling and Attention, 1908, 291 f . ; Text-book, 
i., 1909, 260 f. 



282 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

13 A great deal has been written, of late years, against 
psychological analysis. Consciousness, we are told in 
effect, is a living continuum; but the analyst kills, in 
order to make his dissection; and, after killing and 
dissecting, he is unable to restore the life that he has 
taken, to show consciousness in its original integrity. 
The argument, if it were taken seriously, would apply 
to biology as well as to psychology, and would banish 
the muscle-nerve preparation and the microtome from 
the biological laboratory. But, indeed, it rests only 
upon misunderstanding, — a misunderstanding due in 
part to temperamental reaction, in part to the pressure 
of history and tradition. When the physiologist de- 
scribes a tissue as 'composed' of muscle fibres or nerve 
cells, nobody takes him to mean that the fibres and cells 
existed first, in isolation, and that they were presently 
brought together, by some law of organic growth, to 
constitute the tissue. What grew was the tissue itself, 
which the physiologist now finds, in his post mortem 
examination, to consist of the cells or the fibres. It is 
worth while to trace the laws of growth ; it is also worth 
while to know the constitution of the tissue ; knowledge 
of the one may very well help towards a knowledge of 
the other; but the two aims are different, and do not 
cross. Yet the analytical psychologist is supposed to 
generate his mind by allowing sensations to fuse and 
colligate, — precisely as the physiologist might be sup- 
posed to generate his muscle by allowing fibres to 'con- 
stitute.' Fusion and the rest are patterns of consciousness, 
recognisable precisely as you recognise a preparation 
under the miscroscope as a tissue-pattern, and say 
'That's liver' or 'That's the optic nerve.' To charge 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 283 

the analytical psychologist with deriving mind from the 
interconnection of sensations, — and how often and how 
recklessly has not that charge been made ! — is sheerly 
to misunderstand the purpose of analysis in the hands of 
those who use it. 

The scientific legitimacy of the analytical attitude is 
beyond question. Whether the results of analysis, in the 
sphere of mind, are of Value' is another question, and 
a question whose answer depends on what one is dis- 
posed to consider valuable. What is psychology 'for 5 ? 
If the object of the psychologist is to know mind, to 
understand mind, then it seems to me — in view of the 
overwhelming complexity of mind in the concrete — that 
the only thing he can do is to pull mind to pieces, and 
to scrutinise the bits as minutely as possible and from 
all possible points of view. His results, in synthetic 
reconstruction, give him the same sort of intelligent grip 
upon mind that the analytical results of the physiolo- 
gist give him upon the living body. To approach the 
study of mind without analysis would, indeed, be 
nothing less than ridiculous. And in fact no one does it. 
I pointed out some years ago that the teacher who opens 
a course in experimental psychology with an exercise in 
association of ideas, in order to start out from the 'real 
mind,' falls entirely short of his intention. An asso- 
ciation is just as 'unreal' as a sensation, just as much 
an abstraction, known by the same sort of analysis 
{Exp. Psych., L, ii., 3). It may be preferred for peda- 
gogical reasons, and these may be sound or unsound; 
it certainly is not the real mind. Even the integrative 
psychologists can, after all, trace out only one mental 
aspect or one mental function at a time. Just as we 



284 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

study separately the embryology of the nervous system, 
the vascular system, the digestive system, so must we 
study, in the light of analysis and in analytical terms, 
the genesis of mind. 

I have assumed that a result is of 'value' in psychol- 
ogy in so far as it helps us to an understanding of 
mind. On this assumption, analysis is not only val- 
uable, but also indispensable to psychology. I do not 
say that A 9 & particular bit of analysis is more valuable 
than 2?'s effort at imaginative reconstruction, or than Cs 
flash of inspiration or happy thought. Estimations of 
that sort are waste of time. I do say that many of 
the current arguments against psychological 'atomism 5 
show a woeful misunderstanding of scientific method; 
and that much of the current depreciation of analytical 
results shows a like misunderstanding of the aim of 
scientific psychology. 

All this has been better said by Ebbinghaus, in Psych., 
i., 1905, 179 ff. But, if Ebbinghaus 5 statements are to 
be discounted for their experimental bias, the reader 
may be referred to the opening paragraphs of Jodl's 
Psych. The application to the special case is made by 
Watt (418). After asserting that we have before us, 
in consciousness, a continuity with varying emphasis, 
Watt goes on : "Wir gehen also von dem Psychischen, das 
wir kennen, aus, analysieren die gesammelten Beobacht- 
ungen und experimentellen Daten und nahern uns 
allmahlich der Feststellung etwaiger einheitlicher Zu- 
stande und deren regelmassiger Aufeinanderfolge als 
einem fernen Ziele. Wir gehen immer von einem schon 
kontinuierlichen Psychischen aus. Es ist also keine 
Aufgabe der Psychologie, das erlebte Psychische am 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 285 

Ende einer Untersuchung wiederherzustellen. Es geniigt, 
gezeigt zu haben, dass die Beitrage zu seiner Analyse 
begrundet sind." 

14 Ach, 209 f . 

11 Messer, 107. I have already said that I interpret 
Messer in this way, but that I do not find him clear. 

16 J. von Kries, Ueber die Natur gewisser mit den 
psychischen Vorgangen verkniipfter Gehirnzustande, 
Zeits. f. Psych, und Physiol, d. Sinnesorg., viii., 1894, 
e.g., 4, 17. Towards the end of the paper, von Kries 
points out that his own notion of 'connective adjust- 
ments' agrees very well with Exner's view of the part 
played by inhibition and facilitation in the processes of 
attention, reaction, etc. (S. Exner, Entwurf zu einer 
physiol. Erkl'drung d. psychischen Erscheinungen, i., 
1894). He goes on, however, to say: "auf der anderen 
Seite aber kann ich mich doch der Anschauung nicht 
entschlagen, dass die Psychologie noch eine ganze Reihe 
von Problemen stellt, fur welche die physiologischen 
Vorstellungen eine ahnliche Annaherung noch nicht 
gestatten. So scheint mir schon ein Verstandnis der 
dispositiven Einstellungen . . . auf grosse Schwierig- 
keiten zu stossen. Ebenso ist es mir fraglich, ob es 
gelingt, von dem besonderen, dem Urteile zu grunde 
liegenden Zusammenhange geniigend Rechenschaft zu 
geben" (32). Reference is made, further, to Ziehen's 
'constellation' (Leitfaden der physiol. Psychol, in lip 
Vorlesungen, 1891, 119; 1906, 186 ff., etc.; Introduc- 
tion, 1895, 213: cf. Ach, 248) and — to the discussions 
in B. Erdmann's Logik. 

In a memoir entitled Ueber die materiellen Grundlagen 
der Bewusstseinserscheinungen, 1898, von Kries ques- 



286 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

tions the possibility of transferring to the centre ex- 
planatory concepts that are derived from observation at 
the periphery, and presents a detailed criticism of what 
he terms the Leitungslehre or Leitungsprincip (13). 
He suggests that there may be a differentiation within 
the cell, and that such an intracellular function may 
give the key to mental phenomena which associationism 
is inadequate to explain (60). 

O. Gross (Die cerebrale Sekundarfunktion, 1902) re- 
gards the persistence of excitatory function (Nachfunk- 
tion, SekundarfunJction) as of determining influence 
upon the processes of thought. 

17 Watt (420) refers only to Ebbinghaus (Psych., i., 
1902, 682; i., 1905, 719), whom he wrongly accuses of 
identifying Aufgabe with motorische Emstellung: Eb- 
binghaus speaks of "Falle sensorischer Einstellung." 
It is a little curious that Ebbinghaus does not refer to 
von Kries in i., 680 (i., 717) ; but he had mentioned him 
before, in connection with a reference to Ziehen's constel- 
lation, in i., 664 (i., 698). 

The Einstellungen of von Kries are referred to by 
Ach, 248 ; Messer, 84, 109 ; Biihler, 325, 356 f . 

18 "Meaning," says Stout, " . . . is in the scale of 
evolution prior to the development of ideational con- 
sciousness" (Philos. Review, vii., 1898, 75). With that 
statement I heartily agree. And when I call 'motor 
theories' one-sided (as I called the motor theories of 
attention one-sided, in Feeling and Attention, 311), I 
do so only because they seem, as a rule, to forget that 
ideational consciousness has, as a matter of fact, devel- 
oped. I take a typical instance. "In each and every 
case," Bolton writes, "the object becomes what it is 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 287 

conceived to be by acting upon it as you would act upon 
the object which it is commonly conceived to be. What 
the object means is determined by the adjustment that 
is made to it" {Psychol. Review, xv., 1908, 169). And 
he appeals to the lower animals, and the child, and the 
Indian, as if the child and the poor Indian had no ideas 
whatsoever. 

I take it that meaning began to find conscious repre- 
sentation in this kinesthetic way. But then came ideas, 
and meaning found representation in all sorts of ways. 
If the kinesthetic way is still preferred, under certain 
circumstances or by certain individuals, that may be 
due either to persistence of type or to the action of the 
mental law of growth and decay. Descriptive psychol- 
ogy must work out the details and the percentages. I 
shall accept the percentages with an open mind; but I 
protest against a psychology which ignores that tre- 
mendous event in our mental history, — the appearance of 
the image. I believe, too, that if Bolton were to go 
a little more deeply into the psychology of the child and 
the Indian, he would find plenty of occasions (especially 
in the acquisition of new meanings) when motor adjust- 
ment is entirely secondary. Cf. Messer, 86, and the 
references there given. 

19 Pillsbury writes {Psychol. Review, xv., 1908, 156) : 
"we always see the meaning as we look, think in mean- 
ings as we think, act in terms of meaning when we act." 
If I may wrest this sentence to my own purpose (and 
I do not think that Pillsbury 's idea of meaning is far 
removed from mine), it forms the obverse of the state- 
ment in the text. 

20 So Watt, 317 f . : "Vp. I. 'Die voile Bedeutung des 



288 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

Wortes war schon bei der blossen optischen Wahrnehm- 
ung da. Es ist mir nicht zum Bewusstsein gekommen, 
dass ich das Wort ausgesprochen hatte, oder dass die 
Bedeutung in irgendwelcher Vorstellung explicite gege- 
ben war.' Aber 'ein unwillkiirliches, innerliches Aus- 
sprechen des Reizwortes und zwar, wie - ich es selbst 
aussprechen wurde, und damit gleichzeitig verbunden das 
Verstandnis.' 'Es scheint, als wenn dieser Komplex von 
Schrift-, Sprech- und Lautbild das Verstandnis voll- 
endete. Sonstige Representation des Verstandnisses 
gab es nicht.' " Messer, 71 f . : "Gewohnlich tritt nun bei 
den Vp. das Verstehen mit dem Lesen, also dem 
sinnlichen Erfassen des Wortbildes gleichzeitig auf, 
verschmilzt jedenfalls mit ihm zu einem nicht weiter 
analysierbaren Erlebnis: 'das Reizwort kommt, und ich 
bin mir fiber die Bedeutung klar' — wie einmal Vp. II. 
aussagt" ; Messer then goes on to discuss the various 
Nuancen which verbal meaning may display, up to the 
point at which it "als ein besonderes Erlebnis sich von 
der Auffassung der Reizworte abhebt" : cf . Biihler, Arch, 
de Fsych., vi., 1907, 381 f . ; Wreschner, 6, 103 ff. ; E. 
H. Rowland, The Psychol. Experiences connected with 
the Different Parts of Speech, 1907, 2 ff. 

I have already referred (Lecture I., Note 7) to the 
negative result of Ribot's study of general ideas. Bag- 
ley also reports a few cases in which 'only the auditory 
experience of the sentence' was in consciousness {op. cit., 
108) ; these cases are so few that we cannot, with Biihler 
(Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xii., 1908, 110), ascribe their 
occurrence to a general defect of method. Binet has 
missed the gesture-side of the word; "un mot, en effet, 
ne signifie rien par lui meme, . . . il n'est qu'un element 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 289 

brut, inerte, comme le bruit du vent" (Annee psychol., 
xiv., 1908, 334). 

21 I have referred to this experience in a letter to Huey, 
published in The Psych, and Pedagogy of Reading, 
1908, 182 ff. It made a deep impression on me at the 
time. What actually happened, in experimental terms, 
was that I had to record a 'yes' or 'no' according as the 
grey shown was or was not recognised as a grey that had 
been shown earlier in the series. I found myself, then, 
writing 'yes' without the least apparent reason for doing 
so. My nervous system was 'recognising' for me. 

Storring mentions something similar, in his Exper. 
und psychopathol. Untersuchungen lib. d. Bewusstsein 
d. Gultigkeit (Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xiv., 1909, 1 ff.). 
His observers distinguished, from the 'Bewusstsein der 
Sicherheit oder Gultigkeit,' something that they termed 
'objektive Sicherheit,' 'Bewusstseinszustand der Sicher- 
heit,' 'eine Seite der Prozesse,' 'Charakter der Sicherheit' ; 
Storring himself calls it 'Zustand der Sicherheit.' "Alle 
Vp. stimmen also darin iiberein, dass in den Schlusspro- 
zessen ein Etwas eine dominierende Rolle spielt, welches 
sich deutlich unterscheidet von dem Bewusstsein der 
Gultigkeit mit oder ohne Worte . . . Dieses mit den 
Prozessen gegebene Etwas ist so beschaffen, dass auf 
Grund der Frage nach der Richtigkeit und bei Hinblick 
auf dasselbe Bejahung eintritt" (9). Storring thus 
regards the 'Etwas' as conscious; later on (12 ff.), he 
attempts its closer definition. It is possible that my own 
introspection, in the case cited, was at fault, and that 
my 'recognition' was also based upon a conscious 'Etwas.' 
There is, however, one observer for whom the 'Zustand 
der Sicherheit' appears to have lapsed into a physio- 
19 



290 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

logical disposition. "In der spateren Zeit, als diese 
Erfahrung der Vp. sehr gelaufig geworden war, benutzt 
sie gelegentlich das Auftreten des Bewusstseins der 
Sicherheit auf Grund einer Frage nach der Richtigkeit 
als Kriterium dafiir, dass die als objektive Sicherheit 
bezeichneten Bedingungen vorhanden gewesen sind. . . . 
So sagt sie gelegentlich: 'Objektive Sicherheit war vor- 
handen, das merke ich, indem ich auf Frage nach der 
Richtigkeit hin das Bewusstsein der Sicherheit bekom- 
men habe' " (5). What holds here of assurance may 
also, one would think, hold of recognition. 

22 I can, in principle, fully endorse what von Aster 
says of the character of words and of the significance of 
intonation (Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 78 f., 92 f., 
98 if.), though I interpret the phenomena a little dif- 
ferently, from the standpoint of systematic psychology. 
I am as keenly sensitive to the fitness of words and of 
combinations of words as I am to the fitness of musical 
phrases (Lecture L, Note 11); and the fitness comes 
to me by way of audition, as quality and intonation of 
voice. I have a different voice, in internal speech, for 
every author whose style compels me to a rereading; so 
that style is for me, in primary experience, a matter 
of voice heard. Take, for instance, Mr. Quiller Couch's 
completion of St. Ives. On the side of plot, I have my 
visual schema ; but my test of style is auditory : does the 
book continue to talk in the Stevensonian voice? The 
various characters in a novel speak, of course, in their 
own proper voices, as men and women and children, 
educated and uneducated ; but they also all speak in the 
author's voice, — or, if they do not, they make me very 
uncomfortable. 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 291 

I cannot represent these differences of quality and in- 
tonation by speaking or reading aloud ; I am a very poor 
reader; but I hear them. They have nothing to do 
with the actual voice or presence of the writer; often- 
times, indeed, the imaginary and the real come into sharp 
conflict, and the imaginary has to fight for what is, 
nevertheless, a certain victory. I have never tried to 
classify the voices, as I have never asked the question 
whether my musical accompaniment in reading shows 
any constant character, whether the same or a similar 
composition attends the same or a similar topic, author, 
degree of difficulty. But I know that there are writers 
of uncertain voice, shrill or squeaky or uneven, and that 
there are writers of patchwork voice; if I read them, 
it is only for the matter that their books contain. 

It is hardly necessary to say that these imaginal en- 
dowments do not give my musical or literary criticisms 
any objective value; they simply furnish the conscious 
data which find expression in my personal opinions ; they 
are the imaginal equivalents of what, in other minds, may 
be 'motor' or 'imageless' processes. — 

In commenting upon my 'attitudinal feels,' Professor 
Colvin called my attention to the fact that he had placed 
on record similar experiences of his own: see Philos. 
Review, xv., 1906, 308 f., 516; and cf. the later and 
more explicit statements in Methods of Determining 
Ideational Types, Psychol. Bulletin, vi., 1909, 236. 
Several other members of my audience at the University 
of Illinois testified to the importance of these 'f eels' in 
their thought-experience. E. H. Rowland, discussing 
the conscious representation of prepositions (op. cit., 



292 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

24), writes to the same effect. "All the different preposi- 
tions can be expressed by some variety of 'huddle', and 
indeed that is the only way they can be expressed and 
have any significance." This study contains many note- 
worthy observations, which the author has unfortunately 
pressed with undue haste into the service of theory. 

I owe to my colleague, Dr. W. H. Pyle, the sugges- 
tion to observe the sensible play of facial expression. 
I have been surprised to note how widely the expression 
varies, during reflective thought and silent reading, and 
I am disposed to believe that the corresponding (cuta- 
neous and kinesthetic) sensations play a considerable part 
in certain conscious attitudes. The observations are 
easily made by means of a suitably placed mirror, and 
their 'self -consciousness' soon wears off. 

23 Biihler emphasizes, and quite rightly, the critic's 
need of first-hand experience (Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., 
xii., 1908, 111). I have worked through a large num- 
ber of observations by myself, and have taken several 
series under the direction of an experimenter. There 
were, of course, many experiences that, under the partic- 
ular conditions, I was unable to analyse, and was there- 
fore obliged to leave with a mere indication of their 
presence (incidentally, I gained a high degree of respect 
for the skill and patience both of Biihler himself and of 
his two observers) : but there was nothing that drove me 
to a thought-element. The results will be published 
elsewhere. 

It is always in order to make a reservation for pos- 
sible individual differences (Ach, 216) ; and I have 
recently received a somewhat severe lesson on that very 
subject. I have elsewhere argued that consciousness 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 293 

has two main levels of clearness, and no more than two, 
so that the step and wave diagrams, which represent 
a number of levels or a continuous rise and fall, are 
incorrect. A quantitative study of attention, carried 
out in the Cornell laboratory by L. R. Geissler, and 
soon to be published in Ainer. Journ. Psych., seems to 
show, however, that there are two distinct types of mind, 
the two-level and the many-level (or continuous?): cer- 
tain observers constantly report the one formation, and 
certain others as insistently report the other. It looks, 
then, — provided that Geissler's results find confirma- 
tion, — as if individual difference of mental constitution, 
the possibility of which I admitted more in jest than in 
earnest in Feeling and Attention, 228, were really the 
explanation of the divergent accounts of the attentive 
consciousness: Angell and Baldwin and Morgan may 
be of the many-level, as Geissler and Kiilpe and I myself 
are of the two-level type. Such a difference in the 
general configuration of consciousness would itself fur- 
nish the key to differences in literary style, in manner 
of presentation, perhaps even in mode and tendency of 
thought ; its verification is thus a matter of some im- 
portance ; and I must confess to a feeling of satisfaction 
that, if I have been wrong, the error has been discovered 
in my own laboratory and by a firm believer in the two- 
level theory. 

Nevertheless, I dislike to 'hedge' in the matter of the 
thought-element: I do not at all believe that it exists. 
All that Angell urges against Stout (Philos. Review, 
vi., 1897, 651) tells with increased force against Buhler. 
Stout himself protests against the supposition that, 
"when I speak of imageless apprehension, I have in 



294 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

view a total consciousness rather than a partial con- 
stituent of a total state which contains as another 
constituent some sensation or image" (ibid., vii., 1898, 
75). Calkins, while she regards it as "abundantly 
proved . . . that along with imagery and often in the 
focus of attention, when one compares and reasons and 
recognises, [there] are elements neither sensational nor 
affective," yet declares that "it is unwise and unnecessary 
to advance a larger claim," and to assert, with "Stout, 
Biihler, Woodworth," that "the occurrence of image- 
less thought has been proved" (Awier. Joum. Psych., 
xx., 1909, 277; cf. Introd. to Psych., 1905, 136). 

Calkins' reference to Stout, in this passage, raises 
the question: Who, as a matter of fact, believes in 
the thought-element? The distinction which she draws, 
between an independent imageless thought and a non- 
sensorial and non-affective constituent of a conscious 
complex, had already been urged by P. Bovet (L'etude 
experimental du jugement et de la pensee, Arch, de 
Psych., viii., 1908, 9 ff., 35). "Y a-t-il des faits 
psychologiques, distincts des images et des etats affectifs, 
et jouant dans les operations de la pensee un role pre- 
ponderant"? That is one question: we may call it the 
question of meaning, or attitude, or awareness. "Ces 
faits, les pensees, se rencontrent-ils dans la conscience 
sans qu'aucune representation leur serve en quelque sort 
de support"? That is a different question, the question 
of the thought-element. 

I do not find that Stout answers this second question 
in the affirmative, although he had the two questions 
before him. I do not find that Messer has even now, 
after the appearance of Btihler's work, separated the 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 295 

two questions: he formally accepts the thought-element 
(Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., x., 1907, 421 f.), but in so 
doing he brackets Binet with Ach, and refers to pas- 
sages of his own work (Messer, 77-87, 177-180) which 
are not to the point. Buhler himself is, of course, ex- 
plicit; and Bovet follows him (37). Woodworth comes, 
I think, nearer than Messer to a separation of 
the questions : the first he answers, very definitely, in the 
affirmative ; the second I take him to answer, also in the 
affirmative, in such passages as the following: "I should 
. . . insist that such sensory content [as is unavoidable 
from the continuous stimulation of the sense organs] 
does not always lie in the field of attention, and that at 
times it is so marginal as to elude introspection. But 
principally I should insist that something else does often 
lie in the field of attention, that, in short, there is 
non-sensuous content, and that in many cases it is 
descriptively as well as dynamically the most important 
component of thought" (Journ. Philos. Psych. Sci. 
Meth., iii., 1906, 703). — I should be inclined, then, for 
"Stout, Buhler, Woodworth, 5 ' to write "Woodworth, 
Buhler, Bovet." 

Binet remains. I do not think that Messer is justified 
in classing Binet with Ach: for, while Binet did not 
either, in 1903, separate the two questions, his readers 
have every reason to suppose (on the ground of passages 
like 104 ff.) that, had he done so, he would have ac- 
knowledged the thought-element. Curiously enough, 
Binet now makes imageless thought a matter of feeling, 
sentiment (A. Binet et T. Simon, Langage et pensee, 
Annee psychoid xiv., 1908, 333 ff.). "Nous croyons 
avoir mis hors de doute . . . qu'il y a une pensee sans 



296 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

images, qu'il y a une pensee sans mots, et que la pensee 
est constitute par un sentiment intellectuel." We have, 
then, an independent thought-process (cf. note, 337 f.), 
but it is an intellectual feeling. The specific element 
in thought "est de la nature du sentiment. Ce serait 
un sentiment intellectuel, et par consequent (?) assez 
vague dans sa nature, mais dont nous percevons la pre- 
sence, et dont nous percevons surtout les effets. . . . 
C'est la perception confuse, et souvent emotionelle, de ce 
qui se prepare et se fait en nous, qui constituerait la 
pensee. . . . C'est meme ce sentiment qui dicte les mots 
et suggere les images ; et, a leur tour, images et mots 
reagissent sur ce sentiment." This view has evident 
points of resemblance to that of Wundt. 

24 Many writers insist on the distinction of genesis and 
description, and I should be the last to quarrel with 
them. But when the formations described are stages 
in a genetic progression, cross-sections of a single course 
which leads through growth to culmination and thence 
to decay, — and when this genetic progression is trace- 
able (as it is in the case of action) within the lifetime, 
even within the adult lifetime of the individual, — then it 
seems to me that to make different mental elements out 
of the different mental stages is, at the least, unneces- 
sary and inexpedient. "Quand meme toute pensee serait 
une image transformee," writes Bovet (35), "il n'en 
faudrait pas moins marquer d'abord en quoi une pensee 
se distingue d'une image. De meme les caracteres dis- 
tinctifs de l'homme et du singe subsistent, quelque opi- 
nion qu'on ait sur la theorie transformiste." We must, 
of course, distinguish the 'thought' from the 'image'; 
but that is not the issue ; the issue, for Bovet as for us, 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 297 

is the establishment of the 'thought' as a new mental 
element ; and a 'transformed image' is still an image. 
And who ever saw a baby monkey develope into a man? 
The point is, if I may repeat it: Can the individual 
observer trace, in his experience, the passage from ex- 
plicit imagery to conscious attitude? Personally, I 
think that I can. Why, then, should I introduce a new 
mental element? 

25 Elem. d. Psychophysik, i., 1860 or 1889, 242. 

26 Biihler distinguishes four views or theories of the 
nature of thought. Two of these — that "die Gedanken 
seien nichts anderes als eine Reihe von fliichtigen halb 
unbewussten Einzelvorstellungen," and that "die Denker- 
lebnisse seien etwas, was psychologisch gar nicht be- 
stimmt werden konne, was vielmehr nur vor das Forum 
der Logik gehore" — he dismisses as not worth discus- 
sion (324). The third, the theory of 'possibility,' has 
various forms. In general, "die Moglichkeitstheorien 
suchen eine Erklarung im Unbewussten. Das, was aus- 
ser sinnlichen Elementen im Denkakt bewusst ist, soil 
nichts anderes sein als ein Ausdruck dafiir, dass im Un- 
bewussten schon etwas angeregt ist, was im nachsten 
Augenblick ins Bewusstsein treten kann. . . . Auch hat 
man wohl die Fassung des Unbewussten als etwas Dun- 
kel- oder Halbbewusstes mit im Auge gehabt, so dass 
die erregten Dispositionen ihren Vorstellungen gegen- 
iiber nicht als ideelle Moglichkeiten sondern eher als 
reale, schon partiell verwirklichte Moglichkeiten an- 
gesehen werden mussten." Of these theories Biihler re- 
marks: "alle die Moglichkeitstheorien lassen liber dem 
Moglichen das Wirkliche zu kurz kommen" (325 f.). 



298 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

I share this view: but cf. von Aster, Zeits. f. Psych., 
xlix., 1908, 85 ff. 

The fourth theory, that of 'condensation* (Verdicht- 
ung), looks upon thoughts as "zusammengeschobene, 
verkiirzte, in einem Akt zusammengefasste Vorstellungs- 
reihen, die durch diese Zusammenfassung ihren An- 
blick etwas geandert haben." This view Biihler rejects 
for two reasons. (1) "Wenn der Gedanke ein Verdicht- 
ungsprodukt aus Vorstellungen ware, dann musste er 
sich durch dieselben Kategorien bestimmen lassen wie 
diese Vorstellungen. Nun hat es fiir einen Gedanken 
aber gar keinen Sinn, nach seiner Intensitat oder gar 
nach seinen sinnlichen Qualitaten zu fragen" (328). It 
might be replied that Ach expressly attributes intensity 
to the Bewusstheit (96 f., 101, 212 f., 218 f.); and 
that Messer ascribes intensity to the cerebral disposition 
that underlies understanding, and a corresponding clear- 
ness, Deutlichkeit, to the understanding itself (84).* On 
the side of quality, too, we might reply that it is not 
always easy to pick out the constituent qualities even in 
a tonal or organic fusion, a formation that stands, so 
to say, only next door to sensation; and that it will 
naturally be difficult to pick them out in a formation 
where ideas — themselves complex processes — are 'zusam- 
mengeschoben,' 'abgekiirzt,' 'beschleunigt.' For this 
telescoping of ideas implies, of course, all manner of 
complex synergy in the cortex; it is not, in reality, the 
ideas that are telescoped, but cortical excitations that 
are crossed, cut short, interfered with, inhibited. The 
correlated conscious formation is therefore given under 

* Certain points in Buhler's own discussion (330 ff.) distinctly 
suggest the occurrence of thoughts at various intensities. 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 299 

the worst possible conditions for analysis, and we might 
conceivably have to rest content with verifying the pro- 
cess of reduction at large (from explicit imagery to 
'condensed' thought), without being able to trace identi- 
cal qualities from one level to another. — This is to an- 
swer Biihler on his own ground. If substitution as well 
as telescoping takes place, analysis may be rendered 
easier (as, e.g., by the generic intervention of kinaes- 
thesis) or more difficult (as by the intercurrence, in 
abbreviated form, of ideational processes whose pres- 
ence we do not suspect and for whose search we conse- 
quently have no cue) ; but the principle of the rejoinder 
remains the same. 

(2) Buhler's second and less direct argument de- 
clares that the laws of the course of thought {Gedaiiken- 
fortschritt) are different from those of the connection 
(Verbindung) of ideas; "es ware doch durchaus un- 
begreiflich, wie mit einer Abkurzung und Beschleunigung 
von Vorstellungsablaufen, die ihr Automatischwerden 
mit sich bringt, eine Aenderung ihrer Gesetzlichkeit 
verbunden sein sollte" (327 f.). We might, however, 
very well admit that apperceptive differ from associa- 
tive connections, that determining tendencies shape con- 
sciousness otherwise than reproductive tendencies, that 
the judgment (connection under Aufgabe) differs from 
the free play of association, and yet maintain that the 
formations connected are, in every case, ideas. More- 
over, Biihler, in his articles Ueber Gedankenzusammen- 
hange and Ueber Gedankenerinnerungen (Arch. f. d. 
ges. Psych., xii., 1908, 1 ff., 24 ff.), assumes or presup- 
poses the elementary character of his 'thoughts' : he is to 
show, by reference to mode of connection, that thought 



300 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

cannot possibly be explained by condensation of ideas; 
but he is satisfied, when working out the thought-con- 
nections, to stop short at thoughts as final terms of 
analysis. The Zwischenerlebnisbeziehungen that con- 
stitute the 'thread' of a thought-connection and that 
may link ideas and feelings as well as thoughts proper 
(5), and the Zwischengegenstandsbeziehungen that con- 
stitute logical connection and oftentimes serve to 
introduce a thought or an idea into a true thought-con- 
text (7), these Beziehungen or relations are either 
secondary thoughts or just 'conscious relations' (5, 12). 
But it is still an open question, both on the hypothetical 
ground of Biihler's argument and on the wider field of 
systematic psychology, whether 'conscious relations' are 
simple or complex, ultimate or derivative. Again: 
Biihler makes much of the fact that the thought-con- 
nections of his memory experiments showed themselves 
independent of the associative law of temporal contiguity 
(29 ff.). It might be replied that many modern 
psychologists, in their doctrine of association, accept 
a law of 'similarity' as well as a law of 'contiguity,' 
and that an attempted explanation of these results in 
associative terms would naturally turn to the former 
rather than to the latter. More effective, I think, is the 
reply that the influence of temporal contiguity, in view 
of the great complication of physiological substrate which 
the condensation-theory demands, could never be com- 
parable in its effect with a reinstatement or redintegration 
of the habitual pattern of the cortical excitation. So 
far, indeed, is the lack of influence from telling against 
the theory, that it might have been predicted from the 
theory. Lastly, I notice that Biihler grants the occur- 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 301 

rence, in daily life, of mechanised thought-associations ; 
and that, though the conditions of his experiments were 
distinctly unfavourable to their appearance, he never- 
theless inclines to the view that he has found cases of 
'iteration,' in which thoughts are reproduced as ideas 
are reproduced in an 'association by contiguity' (70 fF.). 
But this lapse to the ideational type of behaviour is, 
so far as it goes, an indication of the ideational nature 
of the thoughts themselves. 

I do not find, therefore, that Biihler's two arguments 
— the direct argument from the absence of intensity 
and quality, and the indirect argument from the nature 
of thought-connections — are, either separately or in 
combination, decisive against the theory of condensation. 

Cf. Binet, 84 fF., 106, 154; Watt, 431 if.; Messer, 
77, 83 fF., 109, 187. 

27 M. F. Washburn, The Term 'Feeling,' Journ. 
Philos. Psych, Sci. Meth., iii., 1906, 63. I may here 
call attention to the same writer's The Psychology of 
Deductive Logic, Mind, N. S. vii., 1898, 523 fF. The 
paper is briefly, almost schematically written, and I 
do not know whether the author still — after the advent 
of the Auf gabe-Tpsyc\io\ogy — adheres to all of the posi- 
tions which it takes ; she outlines, however, a consistently 
imaginal account of concept, judgment, fallacy and 
inference. 

28 Woodworth, in Essays Philos. and Psychol., 1908, 
495 f . ; Calkins, Introd. to Psych., 1901 or 1905, 132 f ., 
136. Woodworth's discussion of the point appears to 
me to betray an unnecessary sensitiveness: the logician 
has nothing to say in the matter of conscious content. 
Calkins has translated logic into psychology, and in so 



302 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

doing has involved herself in a contradiction. For if 
the 'relational element' comes to consciousness as 'belong- 
ing to' its concomitant processes, then it comes not as an 
element at all, but as a connection of two elements: the 
relational element of 'like,' let us say, plus the relational 
element of 'belonging to' or of dependence. One then 
wonders whether the concomitant processes do not come 
to consciousness with a relational element of possession, 
of 'having [something] belong to them.' 

The element of relation has found many supporters. 
See, e.g. : H. Spencer, Pr'mc. of Psych., 1855, §81 : 
"What are these relations? They can be nothing more 
than certain secondary states of consciousness, produced 
by the union of the primary states. . . . The original 
modifications of consciousness are the feelings produced 
in us by subjective and objective activities [by our own 
actions and the actions of surrounding things] ; and 
any further modifications of consciousness must be such 
as result from combinations of these original ones" 
(285). Spencer here comes curiously near to the doctrine 
of Gestaltqualitaten. The passage is retained in the 
second edition, except that the second sentence ends: 
"arising through connections of the primary states," 
and that the third sentence has 'aroused' for 'produced' 
(ii., 1871, 254: so also the third ed., ii., 1881, 254). 
The second edition contains, further, the chapter on 
The Composition of Mind, in which it is said that "under 
an ultimate analysis, what we call a relation proves to 
be itself a kind of feeling" (i., 1869, 164 ; so i., 1881, 
164). Structurally, indeed, the relation appears as 
the typical mental element: for it "may be regarded 
as one of those nervous shocks which we suspect to be 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 303 

the units of composition of feelings," whereas feelings 
themselves are "composed of units of feeling, or shocks." 
Spencer, however, shows the logical bias when he adds : 
"Take away the terms it unites, and it disappears along 
with them; having no independent place, — no individ- 
uality of its own." And yet "its qualitative character 
is appreciable" ! 

Huxley follows Spencer in postulating what he calls, 
in Humian terminology, 'impressions of relation' {Hwme, 
1881, 69). In 1893, E. Schrader published a little 
work entitled Die bewusste Beziehung zwischen Vorstel- 
lungen als honstitutives Bewusstseinselement : ein Beitrag 
zur Psychologie der Denkerscheinungen, in which he 
maintained a like position. We have already referred 
to James, Calkins, Binet, Woodworth, and the various 
members of the Wiirzburg school. Calkins (Amer. 
Journ. Psych., xx., 1909, 274 f . ; cf . Introd. to Psych., 
1905, 136) lengthens the list to include Meinong,* 
Ebbinghaus, Munsterberg, etc. But she can do this 
only by forcing her own system and terminology upon 
writers who have definitely adopted other terms and 
other criteria: Ebbinghaus, e.g., — who has three ele- 
ments, by the way, and not two, — would have protested 
vigorously against the statement that he held "the 
doctrine of elements of consciousness which are neither 
sensational nor in any sense coordinate with the affec- 
tions." Angell, too, in a passage which Calkins does 
not quote (Psych., 1904, 205 f.), explicitly mentions 
two views of relation, the attentional theory and the 

*Buhler (341) also brings the phenomena of Oestaltqualitat 
under the rubric of his Regelbewusstsein; but the reference is 
rather a suggestion than a claim. 



304 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

theory of special feelings (of which latter the theory 
of 'relational elements' is given as a sub-form), and 
himself decides, with apologies for dogmatism, that "the 
consciousness of relation is a basal factor in all activities 
of attention." Judd, again, hardly seems to me to belong 
to Calkins' list, though I confess that I do not find his 
writing clear. Thus, in his 'What is Perception?' (Journ. 
Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., vi., 1909, 41), he remarks: 
"Once the possibility of recognising a wholly different 
type of explanation [than that of analysis into sensory 
elements] is admitted, the conscious process will be 
treated as a complex made up of sensory elements and 
other processes which are functional in character and 
deserving of a separate treatment. We shall then see 
that any particular phase of experience may be described 
either with reference to its sensory facts or with refer- 
ence to its functional phases of activity." I do not 
gather that Judd accepts 'relational elements' as items 
of mental structure or of the 'composition of mind,' 
though I may have misinterpreted this and similar 
passages. 

"Wundt," Calkins says (277), "can afford to deny re- 
lational elements because he illicitly and unwittingly holds 
them concealed within his heterogeneous class of 'feel- 
ings.' " It is difficult to see the force of the 'unwittingly.' 
And if the criticism be valid, is not Wundt more excus- 
able than Ebbinghaus, — in whom Calkins has found 
an ally? For Ebbinghaus holds the relational elements 
illicitly and wittingly concealed in his heterogeneous 
class of 'sensations.' But Wundt can take care of him- 
self. Why, however, does not Calkins refer to Lehmann? 
The Hauptgesetze d. menschl. Gefiihlslebens (1892, 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 305 

339 ff.) recognises a class of Beziehungsgefuhle, in the 
technical sense of the word Gefuhl, which includes many 
of the formations that we have learned to know as 
Bewusstseinslagen or attitudes. Here, then, the relational 
element is wittingly concealed in feeling. O facinus 
indignum ! — 

Many years ago, I myself wrote a bit of imagemong- 
ery on the subject of relation; worse yet, I found a 
logician to agree with me (The Psychology of 'Relation,' 
Philos. Review, iii., 1894, 193 ff. ; J. E. Creighton, 
Modern Psychology and Theories of Knowledge, ibid., 
196 fF.). The relation-artists have, wisely enough, passed 
it by in silence; it represented a crude first attempt at 
analysis, and I can do better now. But I still hold to 
the opinion that my 'feelings of relation 5 are complex 
and sensory-imaginal in character. No revival-meeting 
of "enthusiastic upholders of the relational-element 
doctrine" can shake this conviction. 

29 Lehrbuch d. allg. Psych., 1894, 349 f. "Wir 
konnen auch nicht zugeben, dass das 'Urtheil, 5 diese 
logische Angelegenheit, zu einer psychologischen 'Grund- 
classe paychischer Phanomene' gestempelt wird; eine 
'Psychologie des Urtheils 5 ist uns ein Widerspruch in 
sich." 

30 The most recent investigator, Storring, offers not 
a definition but a 'characterisation 5 of judgment in the 
following terms: "ein Erlebnis, das sich mit dem Be- 
wusstsein der Giiltigkeit oder mit dem Zustande der Sich- 
erheit verbindet, d.h. mit einem Etwas, das, ohne ein 
Bewusstsein der Giiltigkeit zu sein, so beschaffen ist, 
dass auf Grund der Frage nach der Giiltigkeit bei 
Hinblick auf jenes Erlebnis infolge dieses Etwas Beja- 

20 



306 NOTES TO LECTURE V 

hung eintritt" (Arch. f. d. ges. Psych., xiv., 1909, 42). 
It is the introduction of the 'state of assurance' (see 
Note 21 above) that differentiates this characterisation 
from the view adopted, e.g., by von Kries : "Die Vertief- 
ung der Psychologie, die neueren logischen Untersuch- 
ungen verdankt wird, hat . . . mit Recht dazu gefiihrt, 
das 'GeltungsgefuhP als eine besondere und vorzugs- 
weise wichtige Eigenschaft in dem psychologishen 
Thatbestand eines jeden Urtheils in Anspruch zu neh- 
men" (Ueber d. mater. Grundlagen, etc., 1898, 52). 
The new characterisation will probably meet the old 
objection that it is too wide; for there are plenty of 
automatic operations whose validity we should affirm if 
it were questioned, but which assuredly are not judg- 
ments in any distinctive sense. Cf. W. B. Pillsbury, 
An Attempt to Harmonise the Current Psychological 
Theories of the Judgment, Psychol. Bulletin, iv., 1907, 
237 ff. 

31 Biihler, 345 f. (cf. 341); cf. Bbvet, Arch, de 
Psych., viii., 1908, 26; Diirr, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 
1908, 339. Messer (124, 132) brings the Wundtian 
Gesamtvorstelhmg into direct connection with the psych- 
ology of Aufgabe: cf. Lecture IV., Note 25. 

32 For the experimental status of this distinction, see 
Messer, 122 ff.; Bovet, 25 ff. 

33 Watt, 344. Watt refers, I gather with disapproval, 
to Royce's comment that what Ribot in his work on 
general ideas and Marbe in his work on judgment "both 
examined, were relatively reflex processes that express 
the mere residuum of a mental skill long since acquired by 
their subjects": Recent Logical Inquiries and their 



NOTES TO LECTURE V 307 

Psychological Bearings, Psychol. Review, ix., 1902, 
114; cf. Buhler, 301. 

Watt accordingly discounts (412) the criticism 
passed by Wundt upon Marbe's work {Physiol. Psych., 
iii., 1903, 580 f.). Messer also moderates that criticism: 
111 f., 126. See, however, Buhler, 302; Diirr, Zeits. f. 
Psych., xlix., 1908, 314. 

34 Woodworth, in Studies in Philosophy and Psychol- 
ogy, 1906, 351 ff. ; cf . Le Mouvement, 1903, 308 ff., esp. 
330 ff. ; E. L. Thorndike, Elements of Psych., 1905, 281 
ff. ; The Mental Antecedents of Voluntary Movements, 
Journ. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., iv., 1907, 40 ff. 

35 Royce, op. cit., Ill f. ; cf. Diirr, Zeits. f. Psych., 
xlix., 1908, 338. On the chaotic state of the doctrine 
of judgment, cf. Royce, 110 f . ; Marbe, 13. 

36 1 say nothing of the approach to judgment from 
the side of language (Wundt, B. Erdmann) — enor- 
mously important as this aspect of thought-psychology 
undoubtedly is — because I am concerned only with an 
experimental psychology. It is, however, probable, 
indeed almost inevitable, that suggestions for experi- 
mentation come from Volkerpsychologie as well as from 
logic. Cf . Diirr, Zeits. f. Psych., xlix., 1908, 337 ff. ; 
Bovet, Arch, de Psych., viii., 1908, 47 ; W. H. Sheldon, 
Methods of Investigating the Problem of Judgment* 
Psychol. Bulletin, vi., 1907, 243 ff. 



INDEX OF NAMES 



References to the Notes begin with page 197 



Ach, N., 85 ff., 89 f., 96 if., 103- 
107, 109, 111 f., 117, 119, 125- 
128, 130, 132, 137, 142, 144, 
162 f., 173 f„ 183, 198, 235- 
240, 242 f„ 245-249, 258, 260, 
264, 268, 270, 275 f., 281, 285 
f., 292, 295, 298 

Angell, J. R., 99, 244, 280, 293, 
303 

Aristotle, 43, 50, 117, 249 

Arnold, F., 231 

Aster, E. von, 148 f., 151, 154, 
242, 246, 266 f., 269 f., 281, 
290, 298 

Bagley, W. C, 159, 209, 274, 

288 
Bain, A., 26, 43, 65, 215, 219 
Baldwin, J. M., 23, 203, 234, 

252 f., 293 
Bell, A., 203 
Bentley, I. M., 255 
Berkeley, G., 14, 16, 210 
Binet, A., 6, 80, 82, 84, 95, 

113, 117, 151, 197, 201, 205, 

209 f., 212 f., 236, 239-242, 

248, 268, 271, 277, 288, 295, 

301, 303 
Bolton, T. L., 286 f. 
Bovet, P., 209, 240, 242, 264, 

267, 294 ff., 306 f. 
Bradley, F. H., 217 
Brentano, F., 42-53, 60-66, 136, 



218-221, 224 
Buhler, K., 64, 90 f., 93 f., 96, 
98, 113, 119, 141-144, 146, 148- 
152, 154, 168, 189, 191, 210, 
213, 217, 230 f., 235, 242, 257, 
262, 264-267, 269 f., 280 f., 
286, 288, 292-295, 297-301, 
303, 306 f. 

Calkins, M. W., 187, 200, 251 

ff., 256 ff., 294, 301, 303 f. 
Claparede, E., 246 
Colvin, S. S., 231, 291 
Comte, A., 238, 277 
Creighton, J. E., 305 

Descartes, R., 117, 249 
Dessoir, M., 200 
Dilthey, W., 200 
Diirr, E., 149-152, 154, 240, 243, 
267 ff., 281, 306 f. 

Ebbinghaus, H., 25 f., 32, 53, 
134, 137 f., 197, 215, 222, 264, 
284, 286, 303 f. 
Ehrenfels, C. von, 221, 255 
Eimer, G. H. T., 68, 231 
Erdmann, B., 5, 168, 193, 198, 

281, 285, 307 
Exner, S., 285 

Fechner, G. T., 87, 184, 239 f. 
Flechsig, P., 217 



309 



310 



INDEX OF NAMES 



Flint, R., 220, 222 
Fraser, A., 211 f. 

Gallon, F., 13, 201, 205 f., 208 
Geissler, L. R., 248, 293 
Gross, O., 286 

Hamilton, W., 14, 18, 45-49, 

210, 213 
Hartley, D., 32, 217 
Hobbes, T., 163 
Hoffding, H., 102, 245 
Hofler, A., 218 

Hoernle, R. F. A., 64 f., 218 
Horwicz, A., 222 
Huey, E. B., 203, 206 f., 289 
Hume, D., 31, 210 
Husserl, E. G., 5, 199, 266, 281 
Huxley, T. H., 14 f., 17 f., 210, 

213, 232, 303 

James, W., 28 f., 42, 102, 104, 
160, 202, 212, 215, 217 f., 
252 f., 256 ff., 303 

Jerusalem, W., 221 

Jodl, F., 221, 232, 234, 284 

Jones, E. E. C, 200 

Judd, C. H., 304 

Klemm, O., 265 

Kries, J. von, 174, 285 f., 306 

Kiilpe, O., 48 f., 53, 66, 87, 

152, 162, 218, 223, 249, 275, 

281, 293 

Ladd, G. T., 49, 218 
Lange, C, 160 
Lange, L., 163, 275 
Lehmann, A., 197, 304 
Leuba, J. H., 267 
Lipps, T., 5, 199 
Locke, J., 14 f., 17 f., 26, 117, 
210 ff. 



Mach, E., 255 

Marbe, K., 6, 80 f., 84, 93 ff., 
100 f., 106 f., 109, 117, 120 
ff., 125, 128 ff., 133, 135, 149, 
159, 188, 190, 197, 235 f., 

244, 249 f., 257 f., 260, 274, 
280, 306 f. 

Martin, L. J., 162, 245 

Martius, G., 163, 275 

Mayer, A., 100, 244 

Meinong, A., 5, 199, 303 

Messer, A., 66, 85, 88 f., 90, 
96 ff., 107-112, 117, 123 ff., 
130-133, 136-139, 141 f., 146, 
153 f., 168, 173, 193, 208 ff., 
212, 214, 231, 238-243, 247, 
249 f., 256, 260-266, 268, 270 
f., 280 f., 285-288, 294 f., 298, 
301, 306 f . 

Meumann, E., 200, 238, 240, 
249 

Meyer, M., 281 

Mill, J., 26, 30, 32 f., 35, 52, 
96, 219, 238 

Mill, J. S., 30, 32, 52, 212, 219, 
238, 251 ff. 

Morgan, C. L., 293 

Muckenhoupt, L., 203 

Miiller, G. E., 93, 162, 239, 243, 

245, 274. 
Muller-Freienfels, R., 200 
Munsterberg, H., 163, 217, 275, 

303 

Nakashima, T., 219 

Orth, J., 93 f., 100, 102 f., 109, 

244 ff. 

Perry, R. B., 231 
Pillsbury, W. B., 287, 306 
Pilzecker, A., 93, 239, 243 
Pyle, W. H., 250, 292 



INDEX OF NAMES 



311 



Rehmke, J., 188, 221, 223 
Ribot, T., 200, 288, 306 
Rowland, E. H., 288, 291 
Royce, J., 192, 240, 306 f. 

Schrader, E., 303 

Schumann, F„ 162, 236, 245 

274 
Segal, J., 203 
Seth, A., 215 
Sheldon, W. H., 26T, 307 
Sidgwick, H., 200 
Sigwart, C, 200, 209 
Simon, T., 295. 
Spencer, H., 43, 302 f. 
Spiller, G., 224 
Starbuck, E. D., 267 
Stern, L. W., 200 
Storring, G., 94 f., 152 f., 238 

f., 243, 249, 256, 268, 271 ff., 

289, 305 
Stout, G. F., 62-65, 98 f., 117 

159, 216 ff., 224, 226 ff., 230 

f., 248, 274, 286, 293 ff. 
Stumpf, C, 170, 199, 217, 281 

Taine, H., 209 

Taylor, C. L., 247, 274 

Thorndike, E. L., 191, 203, 307 



Ulrici, H., 223 

Volkelt, J., 163, 245, 276 

Washburn, M. F., 186, 203, 
301 

Watt, H. J., 85 f., 89, 96 f., 
98, 112 f., 120 ff., 125-128, 
130, 132 f., 141 f., 144, 163, 
174, 190 f., 202, 209 f., 236, 
240-243, 246, 249 f., 258-262^ 
266, 270, 274 f., 284, 286 f., 
301, 306 f. 

Whipple, G. M., 204 

Witasek, S., 53 f., 57, 59, 61-67, 
70, 73 f., 220 f., 981 f., 245 

Woodbridge, F. J. E., 231 

Woodworth, R. S., 6, 92, 94 f., 
151 f., 167, 187, 191, 200, 216, 
239, 243, 955, 280, 294 f., 301, 
303, 307 

Wreschner, A., 210, 240-243, 
249, 288 

Wundt, W., 5, 27, 36, 49, 79, 
87, 90, 103, 154, 160, 170, 
189, 192, 198, 206, 216 f., 221, 
235, 243, 245, 254, 258 ff., 
276, 281, 296, 304, 306 f. 

Ziehen, T., 285 f. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



References to the Notes begin with page 197 



Absicht, see Purpose 

Abstract idea, see General idea 

Abstraction, associative, 111 ; 
determinate, 240; experiments 
on, 249 

Acceptance, psychology of, 131, 
136, 138 ff., 262 

Act and content, in Brentano's 
psychology, 44 ff., 51 f.; act 
as content of another act, 
47 f.; a distinction due to 
reflection, 53, 60, 74; in 
Witasek's psychology, 54 ff.; 
leads to dominance of idea, 
55 f.; leads to over-articu- 
lation, 57 ff.; psychologically 
grounded, 60 f. 

Action, to be studied histori- 
cally, 33, 169 f. ; akin to 
thought, 123, 128, 141 f.; as 
influenced by preparation, 162 
f.; criterion of voluntary, 
191; see Reaction 

Affective processes, status of, 
in older and newer sensat- 
ionalism, 35 f.; see Feeling 

Analysis, psychological, 168 ff., 
282 ff. 

Anoetic consciousness, 65 9 225 
ff. 

Apperception, 126, 159, 160, 
258 ff., 274 

Association, Watt's experiments 



on, 85 f., 96, 240, 261; Mes- 
ser's experiments on, 88 ff., 
96 ff., 240, 261 

Associationism, confuses psy- 
chology and logic, 15 f., 24 
ff., 52 f.; definition of, 24; 
claims of, 31 ; contrasted with 
newer sensationalism, 34; and 
experimental psychology, 37; 
see Sensationalism 

Assurance, state of, 289 f., 
305 f. 

Atomism, psychological, 27, 30, 
34, 284 

Attention, 175 ff., 218, 262 ff.; 
levels of clearness, 292 f. 

Attitudes, conscious, 98 ff., 117, 
143, 151, 154, 171, 180 ff., 
244 f., 247 f., 270; first ap- 
pearance of, 100; instances 
of, 101 f., 102 f., 107, 109, 
113, 153, 244 f.; affective 
character of, 102, 103, 108 
ff.; behaviour of, in con- 
sciousness, 102, 110, 244; not 
analysable, 103, 182 f., 245; 
Messer's classification of, 108 
ff.; Messer's theory of, 110 
f.; degrees of clearness of, 
111, 298; development or ela- 
boration of, 111 f., 153, 171, 
173, 182 f., 248; Buhler's 
theory of, 144, 266; Watt's 



312 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



313 



theory of, 144; organic, 21 f., 
180 ff., 185, 208, 213 f., 248, 
255, 272, 291 f. 

Aufgabe, see Problem 

Ausfragemethode, see Examin- 
ation, method of 

Awareness, 104 ff., 117, 126, 
144, 180 f.; of meaning, 104 
ff.; of relation, 104 ff.; of 
determination, 106; of ten- 
dency, 106; Ach's theory of, 
105 ff., 174, 183 f.; shows 
degrees of intensity, 105 f., 
298; derivation of, 171, 180; 
behaviour of, in conscious- 
ness, 246 

Belief, 252 

Bewusstheit, see Awareness 

Bewusstseinslage, see Attitudes, 

conscious 
Bias, constitutional, 22 f., 37 

Chemistry, mental, 30 ff.; mod- 
ern substitutes for, 32 f. 

Classification of mental phe- 
nomena, 43, 50 f., 62, 171 f., 
183, 187, 221; Stout's, 224 ff. 

Clearness, attentional and cogni- 
tive, 17; levels of, 292 f. 

Coalescence, associative, 30 ff. 

Colour mixture, 30 ff. 

Composition theory of mind, 
35 

Conation, Stout's doctrine of, 
224 ff. 

Conception, types of, 200 f. 

Condensation of ideas, theory 
of, 298 f. 

Connective adjustment, 174, 
285 ; see Predisposition 

Consciousness, as dependent on 



complication of physiological 
conditions, 32 f.; as deter- 
mined from without, 33, 
161 ff. 

Constellation, 285 f. 

Contents, passive, 66 

Context, psychological, 175 ff. 

Description, and intimation, 148 
ff., 269 ff.; always approxi- 
mative, 149 

Differences, individual, 6 f., 22 
f., 165, 182 f., 187, 200 f., 
248, 292 f. 

Dispositional adjustment, 174, 
285 f.; see Predisposition 

Duration, recognition of, in 
modern psychology, 27 f., 60 
f., 169 

Element, definition of mental, 

170 ff. 
Emotion, and attitude, 102, 108 

ff.; James-Lange theory of, 

160 
Empathy, 21 f., 181, 185, 205 
End, idea of, 126 f., 260 
Epistemology, and psychology, 

35 f., 56, 73, 166 ff., 281; see 

Logic 
Error, stimulus, 145 ff., 191, 

267 
Evolution, as pointing forward, 

69; see Orthogenesis, Ortho- 

plasy 
Examination, method of, 79, 90 

ff., 96, 98, 142 f., 146 ff., 

152, 154 
Experiment, range of psycho- 
logical, 5 

Feeling, in Hamilton's psychol- 



314 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



ogy, 45 f.; as act and con- 
tent, 46 ff., 55; may it stand 
alone in consciousness? 48 f., 
50; does not show transitive 
reference, 65, 226 ff.; in 
Wundt's psychology, 103, 296, 
304 ; Lehmann's relational, 
304 f . 
Fringe, conscious, 102, 218, 228 
Fusion, in Hamilton's psychol- 
ogy, 45, 48 f. 

General idea, Locke's, 14 ff., 
17 f., 211 f.; Berkeley's, 14, 
16, 211 f.; Hamilton's, 14, 
18; Huxley's, 14 ff., IT f., 
213; Ribot's, 200 f. 

Generation, associative, 30 ff. 

Genetic consideration of mind, 
168 ff., 172 f., 281, 296 f. 

Growth and decay, law of men- 
tal, 33, 124 f., 169, 266, 296 
f . ; see Mechanisation 

Hypnosis, 161 f. 

Idea, psychological characteri- 
sation of, 15; as act and 
content, 44 f., 48, 54, 223 f.; 
as typical mental process, 55 
f., 220; see General idea 

Ideas, in older and newer sen- 
sationalism, 25 f., 26 ff. 

Imagery, auditory, 8, 9 f., 205; 
visual, 8, 10 ff., 13 f., Ill f., 
201 ff., 205 f., 211 f.; relation 
of, to meaning, 16 f., 19 f., 
22, 41 f., 99, 174 ff.; kines- 
thetic, 8 f., 20 ff., 176 ff., 
214, 248; verbal, 176 ff. 

Inexistence, intentional, 43 ff., 
322 f. 



Inference, Storring's experi- 
ments on, 94 f., 152 f., 271 ff. 

Inhibition, conscious, 241 

Integrative psychology, 172 

Intellection, Binet's study of, 
80, 82 ff., 95 f ., 295 f . 

Intellectualism, 56, 117; see 
Sensationalism 

Intention, as conscious experi- 
ence, 131 f., 135, 140, 141, 
264 f. 

Interest, as act and content, 
44, 46 f. 

Interweaving of acts, in Bren- 
tano's system, 47 f., 49 

Intimation, and description, 148 
ff., 269 ff. 

Introspection, status of, 4 f., 
82, 276 ff. ; of transitive states, 
28 ff.; appeal to, in support 
of act and content, 50, 51; in 
support of transitive refer- 
ence, 65; in experimental 
study of thought, 75, 79 f., 
82, 84 f., 87, 89 ff., 92, 100 
f., 101 f„ 103 f., 108, 110, 111 
f., 113, 118, 120 f., 124, 131 f., 
139, 143 f„ 153, 164 f., 197 f., 
270, 271 ff.; method of sys- 
tematic experimental, 86 f., 
96 f., 236 ff.; aided by pur- 
pose to introspect, 239; diffi- 
culties of, 276 ff. 

Iteration, 301 

Judgment, as act and content, 
44 f., 55 f., 138 ff.; Witasek's 
psychology of, 57 ff., 245; 
Marbe's work upon, 80 ff ., 
95, 101 f., 117 ff., 121 f., 
128 ff., 190, 197, 244 f.; un- 
derstanding of, 118 f., 236; 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



315 



psychology of, 119 f., 122 f., 
130, 131 ff., 140 f., 188 ff., 
191 ff., 307; Wundt's analysis 
of, 189, 192, 259; Storring's 
characterisation of, 305 f. 

Kinaesthesis, part played by, 
in meaning, 176 ff., 179, 180 
ff., 204, 208, 287; in feelings 
of relation, 185 ff., 287; see 
Attitudes, organic ; Empa- 
thy; Imagery 

Knowledge, introduced by feel- 
ing, 103; Ach's Wissen, 103 
f., 144; for Marbe, never 
given in consciousness, 119; 
as general term for thoughts, 
144 f., 148; as disposition, 
249; von Aster's theory of, 
267 

Language, psychology of, 5, 
198, 307; disadvantages of, 
for psychology, 28 

Logic, relation of, to psychol- 
ogy, 5, 166 ff., 191 ff.; 
confused with psychology 
by associationists, 15 f., 24 
ff., 52 f.; by the Austrian 
school, 53, 60, 221; in the 
psychology of thought, 108 
ff., 112, 242, 280 f.; psychol- 
ogy of deductive, 301 

Maxims, regulative, of a psy- 
chology of thought, 166 ff. 

Meaning, as visual schema, 10 
f., 12 f., 205; as visual sym- 
bol, 13 f., 17 f., 18 f., 208 f.; 
relation of, to imagery, 16 f., 
19 f., 22, 41 f., 104, 174 ff., 
183 f., 210 f., 212 f., 247 f., 



287 ff.; psychologised by as- 
sociationism, 25, 26 f.; prob- 
lem of, in modern psychol- 
ogy, 26, 174 ff.; as refer- 
ence to object, 41 f., as 
awareness, 104 ff.; Ach's 
theory of, 105; as intellectual 
attitude, 109; Messer's de- 
finition of, 110; as imageless 
thought, 113; as context, 175 
ff.; may be carried in physi- 
ological terms, 178 ff., 201; 
as kinesthetic symbol, 213 
f.; specialisation of, 240 f.; 
marginal theory of, 274; prior 
to ideation, 286 f. 
Mechanisation, of meaning, 178 
f., 201; of relation, 187 f.; 
of judgment, 189 ff., 306; of 
thought-connection, 301 
Memory after-image, 87, 240 
Memory of thoughts, Biihler's 
experiments on, 93 f., 243, 
299 ff. 
Mental tests, 82 ff., 94 
Methods of thought-psychology, 
80 ff., 164 f.; see Examin- 
ation, method of; Right 
associates, method of 
Movement-sensations, intention- 
al, 268 

Nonsense-syllables, advantage 
of, in study of association, 
25 f. 

Object, idea of, 126 f., 260 
Objectification, 66, 231 
Objective of judgment, 57 f., 

136 
Objectivity, immanent, 44 ff., 

50; transitive, 62 ff., 230 f. 



316 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Organic sensations, lack objec- 
tive reference, 65; see Atti- 
tudes, organic; Empathy; 
Kinaesthesis 

Organisation, 71 ff., 74 f., 
233 

Organism, psychophysical, 333 f. 

Orthogenesis, 68 f ., 231 f. 

Orthoplasy, 68 f. 

Perception, to be studied his- 
torically, 33, 168 ff., 281 

Phenomenology, 171, 221, 223, 
250, 281 

Physical phenomena, in Bren- 
tano's system, 44 f., 63, 66; in 
Witasek's system, 62 f., 66 
f., 70 

Physiology, and psychology, 35 
f., 37; see Predisposition 

Possibility, theories of, 297 f. 

Predisposition, 107, 124, 134, 
159, 162, 173 f., 274, 285 f. 

Preparation, conscious repre- 
sentation of, 140 

Prepositions, conscious repre- 
sentation of, 291 f. 

Problem, Watt's criterion of 
judgment, 120 ff., 125 f., 
130 f., 153, 191, 260 ff.; need 
not be conscious, 122 ff., 127, 
135, 152, 178, 250; and Ach's 
idea of end, 127; and will 
or intention, 132 f.; and ob- 
jective reference, 133 ff.; 
place of, in experimental 
psychology, 158, 161 ff., 189; 
specialisation of, 240 f.; of 
cognition of reality, 250; 
psychology of, 268; see Situ- 
ation 

Process, idea of, as instrument 



of psychological analysis, 61, 
74; see Duration 

Psychoanalysis, 261 

Psychology, progress of ex- 
perimental, 4; problem of, 
75, 108, 133 ff., 257; Car- 
tesian, of thought, 117; fac- 
ulty, 220; of structure and 
function, 253 

Purpose, in Marbe's work on 
judgment, 118 ff., 121 f., 128 
ff., 135, 249 f.; in Ach's work 
on thought, 126; and rela- 
tion to future, 260 

Quality, in Woodworth's psy- 
chology, Q55. 

Reaction, Ach's experiments on, 
86 ff., 96, 236 ff.; method of, 
in work on thought, 94 f.; 
Kulpe's analysis of, 162 1\; 
Lange's work on, 275 f. 

Reading, visual, 9 f., 203 f., 
207; aids to selective, 206 f. 

Reality, feelings of, 251 ff. 

Recognition, unconscious, 179 
f., 289 f. 

Reference, objective, as crite- 
rion of mind, 43 ff., 61 ff., 
66 ff., 74 f., 138, 224 ff.; as 
due to problem, 133 ff., 137, 
141 ; and stimulus error, 146 f . 

Rejection, see Acceptance, psy- 
chology of 

Relation, feelings of, 28 ff., 
153, 300, 301 ff.; of pointing- 
towards, 67 ff., 232; as aware- 
ness, 104 ff.; identified by 
Ach with attitude, 106 f.; by 
Messer with emotional atti- 
tude, 109; predicative, 131 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



317 



f., 132, 135 f., 141, 142, 262; 
sensationalistic view of, 184 
ff.; need not be represented 
in consciousness, 187 f.; ac- 
tive, in Messer's work, 262 
ff. ; as elementary conscious 
process, 301 if. 

Reproduction, mechanics of, 26, 
33 ; see Tendencies 

Right associates, method of, 
93, 243 

Rule of three, Woodworth's 
experiments with, 95, 152 f. 

Schemata, visual, 10 ff., 63, 
257 f.; fixation of, 12 f. 

Science, progress of, 3 f. 

Self, feeling of, 29 f. 

Sensation, use of, in experi- 
mental psychology, 214 f. 

Sensationalism, 5, 22 ff., 56; 
definition of, as a theory of 
knowledge, 23; thus con- 
nected with associationism, 24 
ff.; here confuses logic and 
psychology, 24 ff.; newer, 
adopts existential standpoint, 
25 f., 34, 134, 137, 264 f.; 
treats ideas as processes, 27 
ff., 34; contrasted with as- 
sociationism, 34, 158 f.; as 
heuristic principle, 34 ff., 36 
f.; older, as form of com- 
position theory of mind, 35; 
physiological, 35 f., 37; of 
Locke and Aristotle, 117; in- 
trospective confirmations of 
newer, 180 ff., 188, 194, 274, 
291 f., 301 

Sensibility, passive, 65, 219 

Sentience, 65, 225 ff., 230 

Situation, 175 



Skimming, 204, 207 

Specialisation, 240 f. 

Speech, internal, 9 f., 11, 147, 
203, 208, 290 

Statement, and description, 
150 f. 

Subconscious, in Stout's psy- 
chology, 224, 229 

Subject and object, in Hamil- 
ton's psychology, 45 f., 48, 
49 

Subjectification, 66, 231 

Symbols, visual, 13 f., 17 f., 18 
f., 208 f. 

Teleology, 71, 232 f. 

Tendencies, perseverative, 87, 
202, 240, 246; reproductive, 
105 f„ 107, 111, 125 f., 127, 
173 f., 183 f., 246, 260 f.; 
determining, 107, 111, 127 f., 
163, 174, 246 f. 

Theories, motor, 286 f. 

Thought, emergence of problem 
of, 4 ff.; psychology of, as 
dependent on ideational type, 
7, 209 f.; visual schemata 
for, 10 ff.; Watt's study of, 
85 f., 96, 120 ff., 125 f., 130 
f.; Ach's, 86 f., 96, 103 ff., 
126 ff.; Messer's, 88 ff., 96 
ff., 107 ff., 123 ff., 131 ff.; 
Buhler's, 90 ff., 96 ff., 142 
ff.; Woodworth's, 92 f., 152 
f.; Storring's, 94 f., 152 f.; 
imageless, 98, 104 f., 113, 
117, 151 f., 159, 180, 293 
ff.; Messer's definition of, 
110; as elementary mental 
process, 144 f., 151, 154, 
182, 193 f., 293 ff., 299 f.; 
and attitude, 144; results 



318 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



of experimental work on, 
158 ff., 164 f.; proposals 
for further work on, 163 f.; 
Royce's theory of, 241; con- 
ceptual and objective, 241 
f.; Aristotle's view of, 249 
Diirr's psychology of, 268 f . 
Binet's theory of, 295 f. 
theories of possibility, 297 
f.; of condensation, 298 f.; 
connections, in Buhler's work, 
299 ff. 
Transcendence, concept of, 64 

f., 134 f., 141 
Transitive states, 28 ff., 216 
Triangle, general idea of, 14, 



17 f., 211 
Types, ideational, 7 f., 22, 202 
f.; of conception, 200 f. 

Understanding, visual, 12 f., 
209; of judgments, 118 f., 
236 

Voluntarism, psychological, 36 
f. 

Will, 30, 131 f., 136, 140, 141 
Wissen, see Knowledge 
Word, as content and context, 
176 ff., 288 f. 






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D.Sc, Ph. D. y LL.D., D. Litt., Sage Professor of Psychology, Cor- 
nell University, Associate Editor of "Mind" and of "The American 
Journal of Psychology. ' ' 

A Text Book of Psychology 

A much enlarged and revised edition of the well-known work 
"An Outline of Psychology." 

Parti, Cloth, 316 pages, l2tno, $1.30 net. 

A Primer of Psychology 

This is intended as a first book, comprehensive enough to give the 
general reader a fair idea of the field of modern psychology, its 
methods of research, and an outline of its most important results. 
Every statement is made with as little of technical detail as is 
practicable. The student who proposes to make a special study of 
psychology will find it time well spent if he reads this book first. 

Cloth , 3 16 pages , i2tno, $1 .00 net. 

Experimental Psychology 

A Manual of Laboratory Practice 

I. Qualitative Experiments 

Students Manual Cloth, 8<vo, 214 pages, $1.60 net. 

Instructor's Manual Cloth, 8<vo, 456 pages, Sz.jo net. 

II. Quantitative Experiments 

Student's Manual Cloth, 8<vo, 208 pages, $1.40 net. 

Instructor's Manual Cloth, 8vo, 453 pages, $2.30 net. 

4 'Dr. Titchener's lucid and fascinating text-book . . . is a triumph 
of industry and competence." — The Speaker, London. 

The Psychology of Feeling and Attention 

A Course of Lectures, delivered by invitation at Columbia Uni- 
versity, which brings together all we at present know of the ele- 
mentary affective processes and of the attentive state. The entire 
discussion constitutes a sort of critical resume of experimental work 
up to 1908. 
Cloth, 8vo, 404 pages, with a bibliography and index, $1.40 net. 



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TRANSLATED BY 

EDWARD BRADFORD T1TCHENER 

AND ASSOCIATES 



Outlines of Psychology 



By OSWALD KULPE, Professor of Philosophy in the Univer- 
sity of Bonn. Based upon the Results of Experimental Investi- 
gation. 

Ne«w Edition, igog; Cloth, 462 pages, 8<vo, $2,60 net. 

Introduction to Philosophy 

By OSWALD KULPE 

A Handbook for Students of Psychology, Logic, Ethics, Esthet- 
ics, and General Philosophy. Translated by Professors W. B. 
Pillsbury and E. B. Titchener. 

Cloth, 256 pages, l2mo, Si. 60. 

Principles of Physiological Psychology 

By WILHELM WUNDT, Professor of Philosophy in the Uni- 
versity of Leipsic. From the Fifth German Edition (1902). 

Vol. I. Introduction. Part I. The Bodily Substrate of 
the Mental Life. Cloth, 347 pages, 8<vo, $3.00 net. 

Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology 

By WILHELM WUNDT 

Translated by J. E. Creighton and E. B. Titchener. 

Third Edition, 43 g pages, Large 8<vo, $2.60 net. 

Ethics By WILHELM WUNDT. 

Translated from the Second German Edition by Edward Brad- 
ford Titchener, Julia H. Gulliver, and Margaret F. 
Washburn. 

Vol. I. The Facts of the Moral Life. 

Second Edition (1902) 3gg pages, $2.23 net. 

Vol. II. Ethical Systems. Second Edition (1906). 

1 g6 pages, $1.73 net. 

Vol. III. The Principles of Morality and the Depart- 
ments of the Moral Life. Second Edition (1907). 

$2.00 net. 



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